A court in Ecuador sentenced the former President Rafael Correa to eight years in prison for corruption charges. The former Head of State wasn´t present at the trial because he has been in exile in Belgium since 2017. Together with him other 19 defendants were considered guilty of accepting bribes from private firms in order to land public contracts, like in construction. One of the other defendants was the former vice-president Jorge Glas, who had been already arrested for another corruption case.

Rafael Correa continues to state that he hasn´t done anything wrong and responded to the court via Twitter: “ Well, this was what they were looking for: manipulating justice to get what they could never get via the ballot box.”

The President has been also accused in 2018 of being involved in the abduction of a political opponent, Fernando Balda, who was briefly kidnapped in Bogotá in 2012. Fernando Balda had fled to Colombia after accusations of being related with a failed state coup organized in 2010.