Ecuador will respond to the asylum granted by Argentina to former Correa minister

The Government of Ecuador anticipated that it will respond with Ecuadorian legislation, international law and the respective conventions to the asylum granted by the Government of Argentina to María de los Ángeles Duarte, who was a minister during the presidential term of Rafael Correa and convicted of corruption.

In a statement, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that it received a diplomatic note from the Argentine Foreign Minister, Santiago Cafiero, in which he communicated a decision regarding Duarte, and indicated that the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry will adopt a response that it will communicate “in due course.” .

As confirmed to EFE by sources in Buenos Aires, this decision by the government of Argentine President Alberto Fernández is to grant the diplomatic asylum requested by Duarte based on the 1954 Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and the American Convention on Human Rights.

The former minister has been a refugee for almost two and a half years at the Argentine Embassy in Quito together with her adolescent son, of an Argentine father, as a “guest for humanitarian reasons” waiting for the Argentine Government to rule on her request. of asylum.

Diplomatic asylum implies that Duarte leaves the embassy to travel to Argentina, for which she needs the Ecuadorian authorities to respect the decision of the Argentine government and not arrest her for the final sentence that she faces eight years in prison for bribery.

Argentine sources anticipated that the trip could be next week, for which “there will be diplomatic efforts to carry out a legal-technical meeting with Quito.”

Given the possibility that asylum would be granted, anticipated last weekend by the Argentine media, the Government of Ecuador recalled in a statement that “the conventions that regulate diplomatic asylum exclude the possibility of granting asylum to people convicted of common crimes.” .

Duarte was sentenced in 2020 to eight years in prison for bribery as part of the “Bribes 2012-2016” case, an irregular financing plot of the then-government Alianza País movement, led by Correa, with improper contributions from companies that were not declared.

The former minister, who held the Public Works portfolio for almost two years, between February 19, 2015 and January 6, 2017, is considered politically persecuted, which led her to take refuge on August 13, 2020 in the Argentine Embassy.

Former President Correa (2007-2017), who was one of those sentenced to eight years in prison in this same case as mediate author (with control and knowledge of the fact), has always denied the accusations against him and has denounced a political persecution to keep him off the electoral board.

Correa, who has lived in Belgium since 2017 and claims to have refugee status by the Belgian authorities to avoid the extradition requested by the Ecuadorian Justice, always maintained a good relationship both with the current Argentine president, the also leftist Alberto Fernández, and with the Vice President, Cristina Fernández.

Source: EFE