A former president of Ecuador has been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of taking bribes.
Lenín Moreno insisted he had not taken money from a Chinese firm which secured a contract to build a hydroelectric plant in the Latin American nation.
The 73-year-old will serve his sentence under house arrest due to his age and disability, and has already indicated his intention to appeal against the verdict after a court in the capital, Quito, found him and 19 others guilty of corruption.
Moreno, who was president between 2017 and 2021, is the third former Ecuadorian leader to be sentenced for corruption.
Prosecutors alleged that that Sinohydro, which is owned by the Chinese state, paid a total of $76.1m (£56.2m) through shell companies to people involved in the deal to secure the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam.
Among those handed prison sentences were Moreno’s wife, daughter and brother, as well as former plant managers, Sinohydro representatives and a Chinese ambassador to Ecuador.
While Moreno himself was alleged to have received very little from the scheme, prosecutors said family members received tens of thousands of dollars.
Those convicted of bribery will have to repay three times what they were given, while Moreno was barred from public office.
He denied involvement in the alleged bribery scheme and instead blamed another former president, Rafael Correa, under whom he served as vice-president and who was sentenced to eight years in prison in a separate bribery case in 2020.
Moreno argued that Correa had signed off on the Coca Codo Sinclair project, and that he had launched an investigation into issues with the construction when he had assumed the presidency.
The Ecuadorian government launched legal proceedings against Sinohydro in 2021 due to cracks appearing in the dam and other technical failures. It reached a $400m settlement with the firm’s owner earlier this year.
The BBC has approached Sinohydro and the Chinese embassy in Ecuador for comment.
