Assembly seeks to recover with bill 35,000 million from corruption
Ecuadornews:
The president of the National Assembly (parliament) of Ecuador, Elizabeth Cabezas, said today that the recently presented draft of the Organic Law on Capital Recovery aims to recover at least 35,000 million dollars diverted from the country in illicit activities.
“I based myself on the figure given by the Anticorruption Commission of 24,000 million, although later it raised it to 35,000, they are extremely important figures,” the representative of the Ecuadorian Chamber said today at a meeting with international media.
This commission is a civil society body that was established in recent years with regard to the proliferation of corruption cases in different political and social spheres.
The initiative has been one of the stated objectives of Cabezas since she took office last March and with it seeks to “empower citizens to participate actively in the fight against corruption.”
“The law has as its fundamental objective the recovery of capital through a mechanism to strengthen citizen participation and give the Council of Citizen Participation the tools it requires to perform its task,” she added.
Cabezas warned, however, that with the project “we do not seek to persecute citizens,” it is a “reverse” process to investigate where undeclared capital is located.
For the elaboration of the law, which in an “optimistic term” anticipates that it could take place in about 90 days, it has counted on the collaboration of international experts as Italian prosecutors, she revealed.
She also noted that “journalistic investigations are a very important input for these issues and could be channeled through a technical team.”
The project was presented on Tuesday at an event attended by Julio César Trujillo, president of the Council for Citizen Participation and Transitory Social Control (CPCCS-t), Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Anticorruption Commission and several assembly members who support the proposal. (I)