QUITO, ECUADOR — A five-year prison sentence handed down Friday to former president Lenin Moreno closes one chapter of a corruption investigation built around Ecuador’s largest hydroelectric infrastructure project. The court convicted Moreno of accepting bribes from China’s Sinohydro during the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair dam, placing him among 20 defendants found guilty in the sprawling case.
Moreno served as president from 2017 to 2021, but the alleged misconduct occurred years earlier when he held the position of vice-president under socialist leader Rafael Correa. Prosecutors documented that Sinohydro channeled bribes totaling $76 million into the scheme, representing approximately four percent of the overall hydroelectric project cost. Those payments reached multiple layers of government officials and project managers involved in the dam’s execution.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.ewn.co.za/2026/08/29/ecuador-ex-president-sentenced-to-5-years-for-corruption.
The judicial outcome extends well beyond Moreno himself. His wife and other family members received sentences of nearly three years in prison for their complicity in the bribery arrangement. Two former managers of the power plant also faced conviction alongside the ex-president. Prosecutors had initially sought a six-and-a-half-year term for Moreno, making the court’s five-year sentence somewhat less severe than the state’s recommendation. The prosecution announced the convictions through social media platform X.
By contrast, the political backdrop to the case is anything but straightforward. Moreno initially succeeded Correa with his predecessor’s backing, but the relationship fractured as Moreno shifted rightward politically and cultivated closer ties with the United States. That ideological divergence transformed Correa from mentor into rival. Correa himself has faced corruption convictions but currently resides in Belgium, beyond Ecuador’s immediate judicial reach.
The 73-year-old former president, who also served as United Nations special envoy on disability issues, maintains his innocence. He stated Friday that he never received “a single cent” from Sinohydro and attributed the prosecution to political vendetta, characterizing the case as retaliation orchestrated by “the Correa regime” following their political rupture.
Moreno has already signaled his intention to challenge the verdict through the appeals process, meaning the legal proceedings are far from over. The case itself reflects a wider pattern of corruption allegations surrounding large-scale construction projects financed through international partnerships, particularly those involving Chinese contractors operating across Latin America. Whether the appeals process will alter his sentence, or simply extend the reckoning, remains the question Ecuador’s courts will next have to answer.