Ecuador’s State Attorney General’s Office, on Wednesday, April 19, requested the preventive detention of former President Lenín Moreno after he failed to appear before the court as mandated in the Sinohydro case. Moreno is accused of receiving alleged bribes for the construction of the country’s largest hydroelectric plant. The Attorney General’s Office also requested pre-trial arrest of eight other defendants, including Moreno’s wife Rocío González and their daughter Irina Moreno González.
On March 6, during a hearing for the formulation of charges, Judge Adrián Rojas ordered all 37 accused to appear biweekly before the National Court of Justice (CNJ) in Quito to ensure their presence in a possible trial for the crime of bribery.
From the beginning, Moreno, who currently resides in Paraguay and serves as commissioner of the Organization of American States (OAS) for Disability Affairs, had rejected the obligation established by the judge that forced him to travel to Ecuador every two weeks over his physical condition. He tried to revoke it through two appeals, including a request to appear at the Embassy of Ecuador in Asunción, Paraguay, instead. However, the court rejected both the preventive habeas corpus actions filed by the former president’s defense.
Initially, the Attorney General’s Office had requested the provisional detention of all defendants, except Moreno and 12 others aged over 65. The former head of state’s failure to appear periodically led the Public Ministry to seek his preventive imprisonment, along with others. The hearing to review the request will be held next week.
In February, the Attorney General’s Office reported that the investigation into the Sinohydro case, formerly known as the INA Papers case, revealed a structure of corruption around the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project. It disclosed that between 2009 and 2018, the Chinese state company Sinohydro paid around $76 million USD in bribes to the accused for the construction of the plant.
The Sinohydro case was opened in March 2019, when media outlet La Fuente published an investigative report, involving one of Moreno’s brothers with alleged accounts in tax havens and a luxurious property in Alicante, Spain, in an apparent financial triangulation of an offshore company, the INA Investment. The report also revealed a series of links and alleged irregularities that linked Moreno to the INA Investment, which led to an initial investigation by the Attorney General’s Office into alleged bribes collected by Moreno when he was serving as vice president (2007-2013).
