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Ex-President
Finds Refuge from Corruption Charges
Kintto
Lucas
QUITO, (IPS) - The Dominican Republic
granted former Ecuadorian president
Gustavo Noboa asylum Wednesday, adding
another link to the long chain of
politicians who have opted to leave
the country to avoid trial on
corruption charges.
Noboa, who served as president from
January 2000 to January 2003, serving
out the term of ousted president Jamil
Mahuad, had requested political asylum
at the Dominican embassy in Quito on
Monday, saying he is a victim of
"unrelenting" persecution
from the right-leaning
Social-Christian Party (PSC).
The leader of the opposition PSC,
former president León Febres Cordero
(1984-1988), declared in May that he
would pursue Noboa "like a hungry
dog."
Six months after the Noboa
administration ended, succeeded by
Lucio Gutiérrez, the now legislative
deputy Febres Cordero accused the
former president of injury to the
state totalling 9.0 billion dollars,
committed during the country's foreign
debt restructuring process in July
2000.
"Insecurity in Ecuador is so
dramatic… that I find it necessary
to solicit diplomatic political
asylum, as stipulated in the
Inter-American Convention on Human
Rights," Noboa said in a letter
sent to Dominican Republic officials
in Ecuador.
On May 21, the first time that Febres
Cordero had appeared in Congress since
the newly elected lawmakers were sworn
in Jan. 5, he accused Noboa, a social
democrat, of leading "a
disastrous renegotiation of the
external debt."
The denunciation was picked up by
government prosecutor Mariana Yépez,
who asked the chief justice of the
Supreme Court, Armando Bermeo, to
issue an order for the preventative
detention of Noboa and several of his
top advisers.
Legal proceedings began even though
the arrest order was rejected due to
lack of evidence. Nor did the Supreme
Court issue an order banning Noboa
from leaving the country.
But Ecuador's migration authorities
announced Sunday that Noboa could not
travel abroad because of a different
order, unrelated to the current case,
involving the former president's
alleged role in the collapse of two
banks.
Noboa's asylum request, which the
Dominican Republic accepted Wednesday,
seems to have become the norm in the
past decade for former Ecuadorian
presidents and other officials who
seek to avoid appearing in court to
account for their actions.
In October 1995, then-vice-president
Alberto Dahik, who served under Sixto
Durán Ballén (1992-1996) left the
country to duck charges of embezzling
state funds, a case also initiated by
Febres Cordero, who at the time was
mayor of Ecuador's second city,
Guayaquil.
Dahik had belonged to the PSC and had
served as Febres Cordero's chief of
staff, but when he left the party a
volley of mutual accusations ensued
between the two men.
Then, Abdalá Bucaram, elected
president in 1996, fled to Panama in
February 1997 after Congress removed
him from office for motives of
incompetence -- he was known as
"the crazy one" -- and
amidst growing popular protests.
In May 1997, the Supreme Court upheld
an order for Bucaram's arrest, though
he had already left the country. The
former president faces five lawsuits
for illicit enrichment and
embezzlement.
Panama has become the home for several
of the Bucaram administration's
officials, including former chief of
staff César Verduga, accused of
misappropriation of state funds.
Fabián Alarcón, who Congress named
as Bucaram's replacement, had better
luck, as he was acquitted after being
imprisoned on charges of using
congressional funds for paycheques for
1,200 people who had not actually hold
jobs.
Mahuad, ousted from the presidency on
Jan. 21, 2000, amidst an indigenous
movement uprising supported by
military officers, is yet another
former leader who left Ecuador when
corruption charges were formulated
against him.
Justice authorities had ordered his
arrest in June 2000 for his alleged
role in the financial damages caused
thousands of savers by the bank freeze
executed in March 1999.
But by then Mahuad had left for the
United States, where he now gives
conferences and is a professor at
Harvard University.
Meanwhile, Noboa has his defenders.
Attorney Joffre Campaña, one of his
former advisers, says "the aim of
these proceedings is to send him to a
regular prison, a penitentiary full of
common criminals where the former
president's life would be in
danger."
Noboa had stated just last week that
he would remain in Ecuador and face
the legal charges against him.
President Lucio Gutiérrez's press
secretary Marcelo Cevallos says,
"there is no political
persecution" against the former
president and "no reason he
should be granted asylum," as the
Dominican Republic did Wednesday.
But the Gutiérrez administration made
it clear it would respect the decision
taken by any country with respect to
asylum requests. Noboa had also
solicited asylum in El Salvador, but
was refused.
Wednesday, speaking from the residence
of the Dominican Republic's ambassador
in Quito, Noboa said, "Febres
Cordero is the most immoral man there
is in Ecuador."
Former president Bucaram said from his
home in exile in Panama that Noboa is
not a victim of political persecution
but rather "a thief who is being
pursued by another thief, because this
is a problem of poor distribution
among the mafias."
"The families of Noboa, Febres
Cordero and the social-Christian
mafias have plundered the country, and
now Febres Cordero is using the
judicial mafia to put down a political
rival," said Bucaram.
At least 15 top officials of various
administrations and former bank
executives have fled Ecuadorian
justice in the past eight years.
The Berlin-based watchdog Transparency
International has ranked Ecuador the
second most corrupt country in Latin
America, after Paraguay. And a
government report from 2000 indicated
that corruption costs this
impoverished country more than 2.0
billion dollars a year.
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