Ecuador asks to enter Mexico embassy, arrest former Ecuador VP

By Alexandra Valencia and Raul Cortes

QUITO/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Ecuador has requested Mexico's permission to enter that country's embassy in Quito and arrest former Ecuadorean Vice-President Jorge Glas, the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Glas, convicted twice for corruption, asked Mexico for political asylum in December, arguing he is being persecuted by the attorney general's office.

"We confirm that the Foreign Ministry, through a diplomatic channel, has requested the permission of the Embassy of Mexico so law enforcement can comply with an order by the National Court of Justice of Ecuador to capture Jorge David Glas Espinel, who is inside that diplomatic mission," the ministry said in a post on X after local media reported the request.

Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor have they publicly responded to his asylum request.

The former vice-president, who served under leftist ex-President Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, has been inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito since Dec. 17 last year.

In January a judge ordered Glas be held on charges of misusing resources meant for the reconstruction of the province of Manabi after an earthquake in 2016. He lost a February appeal against the measure.

Glas was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017 after he was found guilty of receiving bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht in exchange for awarding it government contracts.

He was given a separate eight-year prison sentence in 2020, as was Correa, for using money from contractors to finance campaigns for Correa's political movement.

His lawyer Edison Loiza has argued the life of his client, last released in November 2022 after completing five years of his sentences, could be in danger should he be returned to jail.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Raul Cortes in Mexico City,; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb, Editing by William Maclean)