Security forces in Ecuador forced their way into the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, prompting Mexico to suspend bilateral ties.
Mexico is breaking off diplomatic relations with Ecuador with immediate effect and will bring a case before the International Court of Justice, Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said on Friday evening.
Glas, who is wanted for corruption, had been residing for months in Mexico’s embassy in the Ecuadorian capital.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry announced earlier Friday it would grant Glas asylum, enraging Ecuador.
Ecuador’s presidency said Mexico was violating international agreements, and said that Glas was the subject of an arrest warrant for embezzlement that needed to be acted upon and would not be authorized to leave Ecuador.
Foreign Minister Bárcena accused Mexico of committing a “flagrant and serious violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations” by forcibly entering the Mexican embassy to get Glas.
Glas was vice president of Ecuador during the second term of office of left-wing president Rafael Correa, who left the post in 2017. Correa was convicted in absentia in 2020 as part of a sweeping political corruption investigation and now lives in Belgium.
Glas was already found guilty in late 2017 of accepting bribes in exchange for awarding public contracts to the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht. He was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison, but was released early two years ago due to the poor security situation in Ecuador’s prisons.
For the past several months he has been ensnared in a separate embezzlement case for which an arrest warrant was issued.
Relations between Mexico and Ecuador have soured over the past week.
On Thursday, Ecuador’s conservative government under President Daniel Noboa declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata.
This was prompted by left-wing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador saying that the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador last August had contributed to Noboa’s election victory in October.