QUITO, Ecuador (AP) – A former Ecuadorian president known for his crazy antics was arrested as part of an organized criminal investigation while the government investigates the murder of an Israeli imprisoned in a imaginable coVID-19 medical source scandal, the country’s interior minister.said Wednesday …
Heavily armed police stormed Abdalo Bucaram’s home, woke the 68-year-old man in his bed and held him on sentencing in the port city of Guayaquil, Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo told an Ecuadorian radio station.
Bucaram was not charged, but Romo said a ruling was issued on his arrest while investigators assessed “the degree of involvement, whether there or not” in crimes similar to the death of an inmate Saturday at the Littoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil.
“Lately, the investigation is confidential,” Romo added, refusing to give more details.
The Attorney General’s Office showed that Bucaram had been arrested, but did not reveal much about the investigation, to say that he was part of an arstified crime investigation that also involved one of the former president’s sons and three transit employees.
Bucaram, who broke out of the workplace through Congress six months after his election in 1996, has been caught up in a COVID-19 crime investigation since June, when the government searched his home and discovered an unlicensed firearm, several pre-Columbian art sculptures, as well as 5,000 face masks and 2,000 antibody-coronavirus immediate review kits.
Investigators said at the time that the raid component of an ongoing investigation into alleged embezzlement at a giant public hospital.
At the end of July, their three adult children were taken into custody as the investigation progressed, but have not been found.Meanwhile, Bucaram has been accused of illegal possession of a weapon and of harboring antiquities, which are state-owned cultural heritage.
Bucaram came to force through the votes of the poor and indigenous teams of Ecuador and has become known as “El Loco Que Ama” or “The Madman Who Loves” for his many acts.He once shaved Charlie Chaplin’s moustache on a telethon making money for the deficient young men and liked to compare himself to the wonderful world leaders who had been killed.
He overthrew congress at one time in his presidency for “mental incapacity” and accused of corruption and nepotism.
Recent and recent occasions took a bleak turn last week, when a virtual media outlet released audio of an informed verbal exchange between Bucaram and Shy Dahan, one of two Israeli men arrested after being discovered with $100,000 in money and fake documents seeking to smuggle themselves..as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.But it’s not the first time
In the audio, a guy known as Dahan asks on the phone, “I have your word that nobody’s going to see me to kill me, none of that?”
The answer, supposedly from Bucaram: “We speak of a word, I keep my word that in court I will take you out.”
Dahan was then found dead and by the time the Israeli, Oren Sheinman, was wounded.
Hector Gabriel Vanegas, Sheinman’s lawyer, said his consumer had data on criminal networks organized in Ecuador and had been the subject of “constant threats” since his arrest.The Israelis are believed to have sold medicines to James Bucaram, one of the former president’s sons.with the purported objective of promoting them at exorbitant costs to hospitals in Guayaquil.
The former state-of-the-state official held a press convention on Tuesday and claimed the phone call with Dahan denied committing a crime.
“Bucaram’s circle of relatives has not been guilty of a single death in this country,” he said.