A court in Ecuador has issued an arrest warrant against former president Abdalá Bucaram (1996-1997), currently admitted to a medical center after undergoing surgery, after the former president missed the hearing called for the reading of the sentence for an alleged crime of organized crime for the sixth time. In this case, known as the COVID-19 Tests case, his son Jacobo Bucaram and two other people are also being prosecuted.
The measure has been adopted after the reinstatement of the trial hearing, in which the ruling on the so-called COVID-19 Tests case was to be known, has failed for the sixth consecutive time. In this process, the Prosecutor's Office claims that the former ruler, his son, and two other implicated individuals would have "collaborated, between March and August 2020, with a criminal structure that obtained economic benefits from the commercialization of 21,000 tests for the detection of COVID-19 and other medical supplies, during the health emergency," as reported by the newspaper 'Primicias'.
"For the sixth time, the reinstatement of the hearing is declared failed. The Court ordered the Search Block to maintain permanent surveillance at the clinic where Abdalá B. would be. Upon discharge, he will be apprehended to appear," stated the Prosecutor's Office of the Andean country in a statement disseminated on social networks, in which it explained that constant surveillance has been ordered at the clinic where the former president remains hospitalized.
According to the account provided by Bucaram's family, the former head of state was subjected "emergency" to heart surgery after "days of enormous tension and strong emotions," according to a message published on August 27 by his wife, María Rosa Pulley Vergara, on social networks, where she also indicated that his medical situation is "delicate" and "of a reserved nature."
In that same communication, Pulley Vergara emphasized: "We do not ask for privileges. We ask for humanity, due process, and justice without hatred or persecution. To the media, I ask for sensitivity; to those who administer justice, responsibility; and to the citizenry, regardless of their political sympathies, to remember that behind the former president, the politician, and the name that has generated passions and controversies for decades, there is a human being."