Ecuadorian court sentences former president Abdala Bucaram to nine years for pandemic corruption

Judicial ruling and sentences

An Ecuadorean court sentenced former President Abdala Bucaram and his son Jacobo Bucaram to nine years and four months in prison on Wednesday for organized crime. The first-instance ruling concluded a judicial process lasting over five years concerning the illicit trafficking of medical supplies during the COVID-19 emergency. Judges identified the former president and his son as collaborators in a scheme that negotiated and sold at least 21,000 rapid coronavirus diagnostic tests between March and August 2020. The court also sentenced Leandro Berrones, a former transit officer with the Metropolitan Transit Agency of Quito, to 13 years and four months as a direct author of the operation. Israeli national Sheinman Oren received a reduced sentence of two years and eight months after cooperating with prosecutors, while both Bucarams were ordered to pay a fine of approximately $9,640.

Mechanics of the trafficking network

According to the Attorney General's Office, the criminal structure operated across multiple provinces during the peak of the sanitary crisis in 2020. Rapid testing kits, face masks, lancets, and nitrile gloves were transported directly to Bucaram's residence in Guayaquil under the escort of Quito transit agents. The supplies were subsequently marketed and sold without legal invoices and without paying taxes to the state. Investigators established that some members of the network falsely claimed to belong to the diplomatic corps and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Prosecutors brought related charges against the network encompassing unjustified private enrichment, tax fraud, misuse of public resources, and falsification of public documents. One of the Israeli individuals implicated in the logistics was killed inside the Penitenciaria del Litoral in Guayaquil in August 2020.

Medical condition and defendant reaction

Bucaram, who is 74 years old, attended the sentencing hearing remotely by video link from a private clinic in Guayaquil under police guard. The reading of the verdict had been delayed repeatedly after the former president missed six scheduled sessions, with the final three postponed due to emergency heart surgeries and admissions to intensive care units. Judges issued an arrest order effective immediately upon his hospital discharge, though national law permits individuals of his age to serve prison terms under house arrest. Before the ruling, Bucaram announced on social media that he had requested his own medical discharge despite being at risk of sudden death.

“I will be able to defend myself, and the country will learn horrifying things about this process.”

Following the verdict, Bucaram described the ruling as macabre and immoral, asserting that the judgment would be overturned on appeal and alleging that one judge had published 40 hostile social media posts about his family in 2020.

Prolonged proceedings and political background

The criminal case originated from raids conducted at Bucaram's Guayaquil home during the initial months of the pandemic in 2020. In 2021, a lower court judge dismissed all charges against Bucaram and his son, but the proceedings resumed after the Attorney General's Office won an appeal against the dismissal. Bucaram previously served as president of Ecuador from August 1996 until February 1997, when the National Congress removed him on grounds of mental incapacity six months after his inauguration. Following his removal, Bucaram lived in exile in Panama for nearly two decades before returning to Ecuador in 2017. Defense attorneys did not comment publicly following the verdict, and Bucaram announced plans to challenge the sentence through formal legal appeals.