Ecuador Sentences Former President Abdala Bucaram to Over Nine Years in COVID Medical Supply Scandal
An Ecuadorean court has sentenced former President Abdala Bucaram and his son Jacobo to nine years and four months in prison over their involvement in a criminal organisation that fraudulently sold medical supplies, including COVID-19 test kits, during the coronavirus pandemic.
The ruling was handed down on Wednesday, September 9, following a trial that spanned six years. Bucaram, 74, who served as Ecuador’s president for just six months between August 1996 and February 1997, heard the first-instance verdict remotely from a clinic in Guayaquil, where he has been receiving medical treatment for heart problems, with police officers stationed at the facility during proceedings. Announcing the ruling on X, the attorney general’s office designated Bucaram and his son as “collaborators” in organised criminal activity. Given his age, Bucaram may be permitted to serve his sentence under house arrest in accordance with Ecuadorean law.
The case centred on the illegal sale of at least 21,000 COVID-19 diagnostic test kits and other medical supplies during the height of the pandemic. Two individuals identified as the direct perpetrators of the scheme, Leandro Berrones, a former official with Quito’s metropolitan transit agency, and Israeli national Sheinman Oren, were each sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison, according to the attorney general’s office. A further individual implicated in the case was killed inside a prison in August 2020, during the course of the six-year legal proceedings.
Earlier on the day of the ruling, Bucaram posted a message on X stating that he had requested discharge from the clinic despite what he described as a risk of sudden death, adding that he would be able to defend himself and that the country would learn what he called the horrifying details of the case against him. His legal team did not immediately comment following the verdict, though Bucaram retains the right to appeal the sentence, meaning Wednesday’s ruling does not represent a final conviction.
The case has had a lengthy and complicated legal history. A judge initially dismissed the charges against Bucaram and his son in 2021, though the trial continued after the attorney general’s office appealed that decision, ultimately leading to Wednesday’s first-instance sentencing at what was reported to be the case’s seventh sentencing hearing. Bucaram was removed from office by Ecuador’s Congress in February 1997, six months after taking power, on grounds of what lawmakers at the time described as physical and mental incapacity, following a period of popular unrest. He subsequently spent roughly two decades in exile in Panama before eventually returning to Ecuador.
Wednesday’s sentencing makes Bucaram at least the third former Ecuadorean president to be convicted in a corruption-related case in recent years, following the 2020 conviction of Rafael Correa, who remains in Belgium, and the 2014 conviction of Jamil Mahuad. With Bucaram’s case still open to appeal, questions remain over how the sentence will ultimately be enforced, particularly given his advanced age and ongoing health condition, as Ecuador’s judiciary continues to grapple with a pattern of pursuing corruption cases against former heads of state that, in several instances, has proven difficult to fully enforce.
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