标签： South America

In a landmark corruption ruling that underscores Ecuador’s ongoing crackdown on graft among former top officials, ex-president Lenín Moreno has been convicted of bribery linked to the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam project, receiving a five-year prison sentence that will be served under house arrest.

The 73-year-old former leader, who held Ecuador’s presidency from 2017 to 2021, was found guilty alongside 19 other co-defendants by a court in the capital Quito. Due to his advanced age and documented disability, the court ruled he would serve his sentence at his private residence rather than a state prison. Immediately following the verdict, Moreno confirmed he intends to file an appeal to challenge the conviction, maintaining his complete innocence throughout the trial.

Prosecutors from Ecuador’s anti-corruption unit laid out allegations that China’s state-owned engineering firm Sinohydro funneled a total of $76.1 million in illicit bribes through a network of anonymous shell companies to intermediaries, officials, and connected figures to secure the contract for the dam construction. Among the 19 other individuals convicted alongside Moreno are his immediate family members—his wife, daughter, and brother—former senior project managers, acting Sinohydro representatives, and a former Chinese ambassador to Ecuador. While prosecutors confirmed Moreno personally received only a small portion of the illicit funds, they documented that his close family members received tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payments from the scheme.

As part of the sentencing, all convicted individuals are required to repay three times the value of the bribes they received as a form of judicial restitution to the Ecuadorian state. For Moreno, an additional permanent ban from holding public office was also handed down by the court.

Moreno has repeatedly denied any involvement in the bribery scheme, shifting blame to his predecessor Rafael Correa, under whom he served as vice president before ascending to the presidency. Correa was already sentenced to eight years in prison in a separate high-profile corruption case in 2020. Moreno argues that Correa oversaw the full negotiation and approval of the Coca Codo Sinclair project, and that when he took office in 2017, he launched an official investigation into irregularities surrounding the dam’s construction.

This conviction marks a major milestone in Ecuador’s anti-corruption campaign, making Moreno the third former Ecuadorian head of state to be sentenced on corruption charges in recent years. The project itself has been mired in controversy long before the bribery trial: the Ecuadorian government launched formal legal action against Sinohydro in 2021 after widespread structural cracks and multiple technical failures were discovered in the completed dam. Earlier this year, the government reached a $400 million settlement with Sinohydro to resolve the construction defect claims.

The BBC has reached out to both Sinohydro and the Chinese embassy in Ecuador to request a formal response to the conviction, but no comment has been released as of the ruling. The case continues to draw international attention as a high-profile test of judicial independence and anti-corruption accountability in Latin America.

Weeks after U.S. forces conducted a controversial overnight raid that removed former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges, U.S. President Donald Trump has made a dramatic announcement: what he calls “the biggest oil deal in world history” for Venezuela’s massive untapped crude reserves. Beyond a single social media post from Trump, however, the White House has released almost no additional verified information about the agreement, leaving policy experts, industry analysts and Venezuelan citizens with far more questions than answers.

According to limited details shared by acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez and an anonymous U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the agreement creates a new joint private company between the U.S. government and an undisclosed Venezuelan private operator. This new entity has been granted 100-year drilling rights to 17 undeveloped Venezuelan oil fields holding 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The deal grants the U.S. 55% of the company’s effective output, split between an official ownership stake and discounted rights to purchase crude at production cost. All U.S.-sourced oil from the venture will be allocated to the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve and military fuel supplies. The unnamed U.S. official confirmed that the new firm would become the second-largest corporate holder of proven oil reserves globally, trailing only Saudi Aramco. Rodríguez has framed the agreement as a critical catalyst for Venezuela’s economic recovery, arguing the deal could attract up to $100 billion in new investment to the country’s oil sector and generate more than $209 billion in tax revenue for the Venezuelan government over the life of the contract. Trump added that the deal was negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Rodríguez.

For Trump, the deal aligns with two key policy and political priorities: advancing his long-stated goal of unlocking Venezuelan energy resources for U.S. use, and easing persistent high gas prices ahead of November’s U.S. midterm elections. Ongoing conflict in Iran has disrupted Persian Gulf oil shipments, keeping global crude prices elevated and pushing U.S. domestic gas prices far above 2023 levels. As of Saturday, AAA data put the U.S. national average for a gallon of regular gas at $4.08, up from $3.20 per gallon one year prior. Trump has publicly claimed the deal will bring down gas costs for American consumers, but energy experts uniformly push back on that near-term promise.

Venezuela’s oil extraction and transportation infrastructure has been decaying for decades, requiring billions of dollars in investment and years of reconstruction before any meaningful production increase can occur. “This could be helpful in the long run, but it’s not going to do anything to change the price of gasoline at the retail station for Labor Day weekend,” explained Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University. That assessment is shared by other industry analysts, who note that critical details about funding for infrastructure repairs remain entirely unaddressed by both sides of the agreement. No full text of the deal has been released to the public, and officials have not confirmed which entity will cover the upfront costs of modernizing the sector.

The announcement has already sparked sharp division within Venezuela, where national sovereignty over oil resources has been a core nationalist principle for decades. Many Venezuelans view the deal as an outright betrayal of that long-held commitment. In an on-the-record interview at a Caracas market Saturday, local resident Douglas Borjas expressed fierce criticism of the agreement, arguing that acting leaders had traded national resources to retain power. “Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite,” Borjas said. The criticism extends to prominent Venezuelan economists and former officials based abroad: Harvard University professor and former Venezuelan planning minister Ricardo Hausmann labeled the agreement a “shameful deal” in a social media post, arguing that Rodríguez lacks constitutional and legitimate authority to sign such an agreement on Venezuela’s behalf. “Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last,” Hausmann wrote.

A long list of critical questions about the deal remains unresolved months after the Maduro raid and days after Trump’s announcement. The identity of the private Venezuelan operator involved in the joint venture has not been disclosed, and the breakdown of the U.S.’ 55% output share—how much comes from direct ownership versus discounted purchases—remains unclear. Persuading major U.S. oil firms to participate in the venture also remains an open question, given the country’s ongoing political uncertainty and crumbling infrastructure. Chevron, the only U.S. oil company currently producing crude in Venezuela, declined to comment on the deal, though the firm has been holding independent talks to expand its existing investments in the country separate from Trump’s announcement.

David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, noted that the agreement could theoretically double U.S. proven oil reserves and reduce American dependence on crude imports from Canada and Mexico. But Oxley cautioned that significant logistical barriers stand in the way of that outcome, adding that previous reserve estimates under former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez likely inflated the actual size of Venezuela’s untapped deposits. Even with full legal and security guarantees from U.S. and Venezuelan acting authorities, Oxley concluded that “it is not clear that U.S. oil companies would be eager to invest,” noting that “there simply might be more enticing commercial opportunities on offer elsewhere.”

QUITO, Ecuador — In a landmark ruling that marks another high-profile conviction of a former head of state in Ecuador’s long-running crackdown on systemic political corruption, an Ecuadorian court sentenced ex-president Lenín Moreno to five years of incarceration on Friday. The 73-year-old former leader was found guilty of accepting illegal bribes from a Chinese construction firm in exchange for facilitating the award of a multi-billion-dollar contract for a major hydroelectric power project.

Moreno, who uses a wheelchair due to a permanent physical disability that prevents him from walking, was present in the courtroom for the verdict reading. Per court order, he will serve his entire sentence under house arrest rather than in a traditional prison facility, in consideration of his mobility impairment.

The court’s conviction extends beyond Moreno himself. His wife, daughter, two brothers, and brother-in-law were all found guilty of acting as accomplices in the coordinated bribery scheme. Moreno’s wife and daughter each received 30-month prison sentences, and all five convicted co-defendants have been ordered to pay restitution equal to three times the amount of their illegal gains within a 90-day deadline.

Prosecutors laid out that the corruption network operated between 2008 and 2018, collecting illegal bribes equal to 4% of the total contract value of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, which was developed by China’s Sinohydro. The illicit funds were moved through a web of domestic and international financial transactions to bribe public officials and distribute payouts to private beneficiaries, including Moreno, who was serving as vice president under then-president Rafael Correa at the time the scheme was launched.

Sinohydro broke ground on the roughly $2 billion Coca Codo Sinclair project in 2010 and completed construction, turning the facility over to the Ecuadorian government in 2016. In the years since its completion, the dam has been the subject of widespread public criticism over repeated reports of serious structural defects that have impacted its operation and long-term viability.

Moreno first entered national politics in 2007, when he was selected as Correa’s running mate and took office as vice president, a post he held until 2013. He was succeeded in that role by Jorge Glas, who would later become Moreno’s own running mate when Moreno won the 2017 presidential election as the candidate of Correa’s left-wing Correísta movement. Glas has since left office and is currently serving a prison sentence for corruption convictions.

Friday’s conviction makes Moreno the third former Ecuadorian president to be handed a prison sentence for corruption-related offenses in recent years, though the crimes for which he was convicted occurred before he took the nation’s highest office. His predecessor in the presidency, Rafael Correa, was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2020 for his role in a separate bribery scandal involving Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht. Correa has lived in Belgium for years and remains outside the reach of Ecuadorian law enforcement. Before that, former president Jamil Mahuad was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2014 for misappropriation of public funds. Another ex-president, Abdalá Bucaram, has already been convicted of organized crime charges and is currently awaiting sentencing.

Nearly nine months after ordering a U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan sitting president Nicolás Maduro on federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges, former President Donald Trump made a bombshell announcement Friday: the United States has struck a deal with Venezuela’s US-aligned interim government to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American nation’s proven crude reserves.

In a social media post, Trump framed the arrangement as the single largest oil agreement in global history, noting it was negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. The Maduro-aligned Venezuelan government did not immediately issue a response to requests for comment, and the White House also declined to elaborate on key details including which private sector partners would be involved in the deal, or how operational control of the reserves would be transferred.

The announcement comes at a moment of intense political pressure for the Trump administration, as the U.S.-Israel war on Iran passes the six-month mark with no end to conflict in sight. The ongoing hostilities have severely disrupted global oil supplies, cutting off a large share of Gulf crude that once moved through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint that carried roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum supplies before the conflict broke out.

Domestically, the supply crunch has pushed U.S. gasoline prices sharply higher: AAA data puts the national average for a gallon of regular gas at $4.09 as of Friday, a steep jump from $3.21 per gallon during the same period last year. To offset market volatility, the Trump administration has drawn heavily from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which dropped below 300 million barrels in early August. That marks a decline of more than 100 million barrels since the start of 2026, leaving the reserve at its lowest level in decades.

Trump only alluded to the deal’s structure as a private partnership in his post, but industry experts warn that persuading major U.S. oil firms to ramp up operations in Venezuela will face significant obstacles. Decades of underinvestment and political upheaval have left the country’s oil extraction and transport infrastructure severely dilapidated, and many major operators still carry bad memories of past nationalization efforts.

Shortly after Maduro was ousted from power, Trump hosted top oil industry executives at the White House to urge a rapid return to Venezuelan operations. While many firms expressed preliminary interest in the massive reserve potential, leadership remained cautious. Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil — the United States’ largest domestic oil company — publicly characterized Venezuela as “un-investable” in the immediate aftermath of the regime change.

Despite these headwinds, the Trump administration has pushed forward with the agreement, arguing that past Venezuelan governments seized U.S. corporate assets decades ago when former President Hugo Chavez completed the nationalization of hundreds of foreign-owned oil holdings, including assets belonging to major American energy firms. The administration claims it has restored sufficient stability to Venezuela to open the sector for foreign investment, a claim echoed by Rodriguez’s interim government. One of Rodriguez’s first policy moves after taking power was signing legislation that reverses the core socialist principle of state control over oil that defined Venezuelan policy for more than two decades, fully opening the sector to private foreign investment.

Appearing on the social platform X, Rubio framed the agreement as a mutually beneficial breakthrough, saying it would bring $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela while driving down domestic gasoline prices for U.S. consumers. “This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” Rubio wrote.

Venezuela already holds one of the largest proven crude reserve bases in the world. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration puts the country’s total in-ground reserves at 303 billion barrels, equal to roughly 17% of global proven supplies. Unlike most other major oil-producing regions, nearly all of Venezuela’s untapped reserves are already mapped and confirmed, eliminating the high costs of exploratory drilling. Yet due to decades of crumbling infrastructure and mismanagement, the nation currently produces only around 1% of the world’s total annual crude output, leaving massive room for expansion if new investment is successfully deployed.

Brazil’s high-stakes presidential contest enters a new phase this Friday, as the two front-runners — incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition leader Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro — launch their official free campaign advertising blitz across national television and radio networks. Long-time political observers note that even amid the global explosion of social media campaigning, these traditional broadcast platforms remain one of the most influential tools for winning voter support across Brazil’s vast, continental territory.

Polls currently show the race is a dead heat: Lula, who is running for an unprecedented fourth non-consecutive term, holds a negligible lead over Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. This tight margin has political analysts forecasting that the ad campaigns will be among the most combative in recent Brazilian history. Independent political consultant and former Brazilian government minister Thomas Traumann warns that the tone of this election will be even more toxic than the 2022 presidential race, which stands as one of the most divisive in the country’s post-democracy history. That 2022 contest saw Lula defeat Jair Bolsonaro by the narrowest margin since Brazil returned to democratic rule in 1985, and the former president is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for his role in orchestrating the 2023 coup attempt following his election loss.

For millions of Brazilian voters, the arrival of daily campaign ads on TV and radio serves as an unmistakable marker that election season is underway, much like iconic Brazil national flags and street art signal the coming of the World Cup. Unlike the United States, where political candidates must spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy broadcast ad time, Brazil’s system allocates free airtime to political parties based on the size of their electoral coalitions and their existing representation in the country’s lower house of Congress.

Communications scholar Bruno Pompeu, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo, explains that this free ad framework is intentionally designed to uphold core democratic principles. “The gratuity of ads defends the democratic principle of equal treatment and means the amount of time each party gets is not going to be determined by the economic power of each party,” Pompeu noted.

This structure has already created an uneven playing field for the two front-runners in the first round of voting, scheduled for October 4. Lula and his allied coalition have secured 5 minutes and 31 seconds of daily dedicated ad time, while Flávio Bolsonaro’s bloc will only receive 4 minutes and 20 seconds. The remaining allocated airtime will be split between the two smaller party candidates still in the race. Traumann argues that this smaller allocation of time for Bolsonaro highlights a key weakness in his candidacy: unlike his father, who successfully united a broad right-wing coalition on his way to winning the 2018 presidency, Flávio Bolsonaro has struggled to win the backing of major established parties. If a run-off vote is required — scheduled for October 25 — the two remaining candidates will receive equal airtime under Brazilian electoral law.

For many long-time voters, these broadcast ads remain a core part of how they engage with elections. Maria Izabel Pecanha, an 84-year-old retired history teacher living in Rio de Janeiro, says she has relied on TV and radio campaign coverage since the 1950s, and ignores most social media political content. “I like to watch them to feel excited, to feel angry, to think of how Brazil’s political actors show themselves. It is always very instructive,” Pecanha said. “I have watched today’s and I will keep doing that until the end of the campaign, it is like watching a bit of history unfold.”

Even as digital campaigning grows in prominence, political analysts say traditional broadcast ads retain unmatched reach, penetrating remote rural regions of Brazil where social media access is often limited or inconsistent, and shaping national public conversation around the election. Still, the medium is evolving to match shifting media habits: João Ricardo Matta, a business professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, one of Brazil’s leading academic and research institutions, says social media’s more casual, conversational tone is already shaping the style of this cycle’s TV and radio spots. “They will be less artificial, more natural, with the appearance of something homemade,” Matta said, adding that many campaigns are shifting a larger share of their overall budgets from traditional broadcast ad production to digital social media content.

Overall, broadcasters are required to set aside 14 minutes of daily airtime for nearly 1,000 30-second campaign ads across all races, plus an additional 12 and a half minutes reserved exclusively for presidential candidates, in the lead-up to the October 4 first round.

Weeks after being sworn into office as Colombia’s new right-wing head of state, Abelardo de la Espriella has greenlit the extradition of five illegal armed group members sought by U.S. authorities on a slate of drug-related offenses, marking a sharp reversal of his left-wing predecessor Gustavo Petro’s landmark peace initiative.

SAO PAULO — In a high-stakes move that underscores growing global pressure on social and communication platforms to safeguard young users, Brazil’s federal government announced Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against gaming communication giant Discord demanding 500 million reais (roughly $97 million) in damages over claims the company failed to enact robust protections for children and adolescents on its platform. The legal action comes directly in the aftermath of a July suicide case that authorities have linked to harmful activity on Discord, a development that has already sparked escalating tensions between the platform and Brazilian regulators. Earlier this month, Brazilian officials ordered Discord to suspend all live streaming features on its service in connection with the ongoing investigation into the incident.

In an official statement released by the Solicitor-General’s office under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the government argues the sought-after damages address alleged widespread collective psychological harm that Discord’s inadequate safety frameworks have enabled. The 25-page legal filing, obtained and verified by the Associated Press, details critical gaps in Discord’s age verification systems and core user safety protections, claiming the platform has directly violated multiple Brazilian legal provisions mandating special safeguards for vulnerable groups including children and teenagers.

Beyond financial damages, Brazilian authorities are asking the federal court to issue a mandatory order requiring Discord to immediately implement enhanced parental control tools, deepen information-sharing and cooperation with local law enforcement agencies, and roll out advanced automated detection systems to quickly identify and remove harmful, dangerous content from the platform. The lawsuit also notes that Discord is already facing similar regulatory and legal scrutiny across the globe, with active legal challenges pending in several U.S. states including Texas, Nevada, and New Jersey.

Discord’s Brazilian leadership pushed back immediately against the government’s action, releasing a statement calling the lawsuit “disproportionate” and arguing it does not accurately reflect the company’s existing commitments to user safety and compliance with Brazilian national legislation.

The legal filing comes as the Lula administration prioritizes youth internet regulation ahead of October’s general election, where Lula is running for reelection. Brazil’s Supreme Court has also backed efforts to create stricter rules for minor online activity, though past attempts at meaningful regulation have delivered mixed results. Brazil is far from alone in this push: countries including Australia, Canada, and Indonesia have all recently advanced similar regulatory efforts to protect young people online.

Brazil’s first lady Rosângela Lula da Silva, widely known by her nickname Janja, first publicly called for Discord to be fully taken offline in early August, directly referencing the July suicide case that triggered the current legal action. Brazil’s justice ministry has confirmed that five teenagers have been arrested thus far in connection with the death. Launched primarily as a communication hub for gaming communities, Discord now boasts more than 90 million active daily users across the globe, according to data published on the company’s official website.