Corruption in Ecuador
[1] According to Freedom House, "Ecuador has long been racked by corruption", and the weak judicial oversight and investigative resources perpetuate a culture of impunity.
[3] David Rosero, a member of the opposition party and Ecuador's Council for Citizen Participation, has said that $2 billion is lost every year to corruption.
[7] A 2014 report by the Organization of American States urged the Ecuadoran Prosecutor's Office to remove barriers to processing corruption complaints and prosecutions.
[9] In 2015, Congressmember Maria Esperanza Galván was arrested for requesting an $800,000 bribe from a company in exchange for public contracts from her district.
Fabricio sued the journalists who broke the story, and the president, who claimed he was unaware of the contracts, formed a special commission to investigate the case.
[4][10] The so-called Panama Papers that were leaked in April 2016 showed that Correa and his brother owned an offshore company that was apparently being used for corrupt purposes.
[12] In 2010, author and professor Alberto Valencia Granada published a book called When Success is a Crime: Filanbanco: A Case of Violation of Human Rights in Ecuador.
[8] The system is compromised by the fact that the Judicial Council, the judiciary's governing body, is run by an intimate of Correa's, Gustavo Jalkh, who was the president's private secretary.
[4] "Corruption, inefficiency, and political influence have plagued the Ecuadorian judiciary for many years," stated Human Rights Watch in 2012.
[8] In 2011 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights accused Ecuador of violating the due process of 27 Supreme Court justices dismissed by Congress in 2004.
[1] U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in 2014 that an $18 billion pollution judgment against Chevron by an Ecuadoran court in 2011 had been the product of corruption.
Attorney Steven Donziger and his legal team, according to Kaplan, had "used bribery, fraud and extortion" to win the case for his clients, a group of Ecuadoran villagers.
[17][18] Diana Salazar, the Attorney General of Ecuador, emphasized that the Purga Case highlights how corruption infiltrated the highest echelons of legislative politics.
This corruption facilitated collusion with drug trafficking networks and influenced the administration of justice, particularly in the influential province of Guayas.
[19][20][21] According to Salazar, the Purga Case illustrates how these corrupt practices compromised the integrity of the justice system in Guayas, enabling criminal economies to operate with impunity.
The extractive industries, which make up more than half of Ecuador's exports, have been characterized by a lack of transparency in regard to money and environmental impact data.
[9] Although Ecuadoran law guarantees property rights, in practice they are often unprotected, and the government is alleged to threaten embargo or nationalization to pressure companies.
[8] In 2014, the Superintendency of Information and Communication (SUPERCOM) ordered changes in a cartoon in El Universo criticizing government corruption, and fined the newspaper as well.
[9] Officially, bribing government employees, influence peddling, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, and extortion are banned by the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, Chapter 5, section 3, and by the Ecuadorian Constitution.
Laws are technically in place to sanction public officials who request or receive gifts, privileges, or advantages with their power.
The Comptroller General and other government entities are empowered to probe and prosecute cases of corruption involving public contracts.
Both this code and the Ecuadorian Constitution (article 233) criminalize bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement, and illegal enrichment and extortion.
The Comptroller General controls, supervises, and audits acts by government employees, and in principle has the power to remove and sanction corrupt individuals and report them to the Public Prosecutor's Office.
[9] In December 2014, Ecuador, along with other Latin American and Caribbean countries, issued the Quito Declaration, which emphasized the importance of combatting corruption more seriously.
