Desperate
to ingratiate his government with Washington and distract the public
from his mounting scandals, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has
sacrificed Julian Assange – and his country’s independence
by
Denis Rogatyuk
Part
2 - The INA Papers scandal and growing political instability
WikiLeaks’s
decision to re-publish the details of Moreno’s use of off-shore
bank accounts in Panama, infamously titled INA Papers after the name
of the shell corporation at the centre of the scandal (INA Investment
Corporation) appear to be the main cause for the president’s
decision to expel Assange from the embassy.
Ecuadorian
Communications Minister Andrés Michelena event went as far as
claiming that the INA Papers were a conspiracy plot between Julian
Assange, the former president Rafael Correa and the current
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The INA
Papers scandal has cast a long shadow on Moreno’s regime and
shattered its pledge to fight against institutional corruption. The
scandal reveals that a close associate of Moreno, Xavier Macias,
lobbied for the contract of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric
power plant (valued at $2.8 billion) as well as the ZAMORA 3000 MW
plant to be awarded Sinohydro, a Chinese state-owned construction
company.
The
financial trail from the Chinese corporation passed through bank
accounts in Panama belonging to INA Investment Corporation – a
shell company originally founded in Belize, a notable tax haven, by
Edwin Moreno Garcés, the brother of the current President. The most
crucial pieces of evidence indicate that the INA Investment funds
were used for the purchase of a 140 m2 apartment in the city of
Alicante, Spain, and a number of luxury items for President Moreno
and his family in Geneva, Switzerland, during his time as a special
envoy on disability rights in the United Nations.
As the
pressure mounted on Moreno, the Attorney General of Ecuador issued a
statement on March 19th, indicating that it had commenced an
investigation into the INA Papers scandal involving the president and
his family. Next, on March 27th, the National Assembly of Ecuador
approved a vote in favor of investigating Moreno’s alleged
off-shore bank dealings in Panama. According to Ecuador Inmediato,
153 public service officials, along with all members of the National
Assembly, were also included in the initial public hearing scheduled
for April 1st.
The
corruption scandal came amid a number of other prominent crises
disrupting both the Moreno administration and the Ecuadorian economy.
The local and regional elections of March 24th, as well as the
election to the Council of Citizens’ Participation and Social
Control (CPCCS) on March 24th, have been riddled with a series of
controversies and irregularities with regards to vote counts and
allegations of fraud, including the attempts to invalidate null
votes, disqualify and smear the candidates endorsed by ex-President
Rafael Correa. The stunning lack of transparency and legitimacy was
highlighted by a report of the mission of electoral observers of the
Organisation of American States.
In an
unusual twist, the US ambassador, Todd Chapman, was spotted visiting
the headquarters of Ecuador’s National Electoral Council during the
March 24th elections and allegedly participated as an official
electoral observer in the elections. This display of interference was
widely condemned on social media as illegal under the current
electoral rules, which forbid foreign powers from playing any active
role in the observing or interfering the electoral process. But in
Moreno’s Ecuador, it was a perfect symbol of the new status quo.
Source,
links:
Nearly a year ago, these predictions unfortunately are now reality: https://t.co/gQonJV7uSC— failedevolution (@failedevolution) April 12, 2019
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