Designations Come Just Days After Correa Met with Julian Assange
Washington, DC — The US State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions against Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa, former vice president Jorge Glas, and members of their families are a “transparently political attempt to weaken” Correa’s political movement ahead of elections in February, CEPR Director of International Policy Alex Main said today. The US designations will prevent the political figures, their wives, and their children from entering the United States. They come as current president Daniel Noboa, who has warm relations with the US administration, faces declining popularity due to a persistent energy crisis that has led to prolonged nationwide blackouts.
“These designations are wholly unjustified and are clearly a political maneuver intended to damage the movement Correa founded ahead of next year’s elections,” Main said.
CEPR Senior Research Fellow and former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Guillaume Long added, “President Noboa’s presidential term has been marked by an ongoing security crisis, with organized crime becoming increasingly more pervasive and powerful in Ecuador, and by numerous controversies, including a widely condemned raid on Mexico’s embassy in Quito, numerous human rights violations by security forces and serious allegations of misconduct and political persecution by the country’s attorney general. In this context, the US government is once again putting its thumb on the scale to try to tip the balance to the right and prevent a progressive government from returning.”
Correa was convicted in 2020 of exerting “psychic influence” over office holders in a bribery case based largely on fabricated evidence. Interpol has refused on three occasions to issue a red notice against Correa, who was granted political asylum by Belgium in 2022, where he has resided since the end of his presidential term in 2017. Recently, evidence has emerged suggesting that the attorney general, Diana Salazar, has been politically motivated in her prosecution of Correa and former members of his government. Nevertheless, the US State Department has provided cover for Salazar, most notably by officially declaring her an “anti-corruption champion.”
The designations come four years after Correa’s conviction but just days after Correa met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had been granted asylum by the Correa government and who lived for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Correa was the first high-level politician outside of Australia to meet with Assange following his release from Belmarsh Prison in London in June.
“The timing of these designations, just after Correa met with Assange, could have a chilling effect and may be intended to discourage other officials from showing support for Assange and WikiLeaks,” Main said.
With the inclusion of Correa’s wife and children — who have never had any involvement in Ecuadorian politics — the designation appears to be of a brazenly arbitrary and vindictive character.
By contrast, the US government has not followed through on congressional requests to investigate Ecuador’s former right-wing president Guillermo Lasso, who chose to end his presidency rather than face impeachment over corruption allegations, who has associates linked to organized crime, and whose family is connected to a series of shell companies and more than 140 real estate properties in Florida worth tens of millions of dollars. Nor did US authorities target former president Lenín Moreno after an arrest warrant was issued against him in March 2023 on charges of corruption. The US government has also supported current president Noboa despite allegations of human rights violations and despite his orders in April to raid the Mexican embassy in Quito, in a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and forcibly arrest Glas, who had been granted political asylum.
“These visa restrictions are clearly mostly symbolic,” Long noted. “Correa hasn’t traveled to the US since 2016, and Glas is currently in one of Ecuador’s most notorious prisons. The US government is degrading the gravity and effectiveness of its visa restrictions with such transparently political and baseless designations. If it is to retain any credibility in its use of these restrictions to target allegedly corrupt foreign actors, it should immediately revoke them.”
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