Lenín Moreno

Lenín Voltaire Moreno Garcés (Spanish: [leˈnim bolˈtajɾe moˈɾeno ɣaɾˈses]; born 19 March 1953) is an Ecuadorian politician who was the 46th president of Ecuador from 2017 to 2021. He was also vice president from 2007 to 2013, under President Rafael Correa.

He was nominated as the candidate for Correa's PAIS Alliance, a social democratic political party, in the 2017 presidential election and won a narrow victory in Ecuador's second round of voting on 2 April 2017. However, after his election Moreno drastically shifted his political stance, distancing himself from Correa's leftist legacy in both domestic and foreign policy.

After completing a presidential term marked by corruption, violence, and the implementation of a series of neoliberal reforms in his country, Lenín Moreno became extremely unpopular among the Ecuadorian people. By the end of Moreno's presidency he had left office with an approval rating of 9%, the lowest in modern Ecuadorian history, due to his poor administration, lack of achievements, and continuous corruption scandals. He was expelled from PAIS Alliance in March 2021 after the party's crushing defeat in the 2021 elections.

In August 2026, he was sentenced to five years in prison for bribery by the National Court of Justice in the Sinohydro Case. The former president had received bribes to facilitate financing for the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project. The Court also ordered his “permanent disqualification from holding public office.” He is the first former president of Ecuador to be convicted of bribery.

Moreno was shot in a 1998 robbery attempt and thereafter has used a wheelchair. For his advocacy for people with disabilities, he was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. According to The New York Times, while he was in office from 2017 to 2021, Moreno was the world's only serving head of state to use a wheelchair.