QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — An Ecuadorian businessman has been jailed over a scam to sell body bags to a hospital for more than 10 times their cost price amid a spike in novel coronavirus cases, the prosecution service said yesterday.

Daniel Salcedo was arrested in Peru a year ago after crashing the small plane in which he had sought to flee capture in Ecuador.

He has been found guilty of embezzlement over a scheme to sell body bags valued at about US$10 each for almost US$150 apiece to a hospital in Guayaquil in south-west Ecuador.

The hospital was at the time struggling to cope with an influx of coronavirus patients and was running out of space for the dead.

Salcedo and three hospital bosses in on the scheme were each sentenced to 13 years in jail, the prosecution service said in a statement.

Other ex-hospital staff charged in the case were given lighter penalties.

Salcedo and seven accomplices were found guilty of “arbitrarily availing themselves of public funds from a contract for which a budget of $872,000 was awarded”, the statement added.

This was done in spite of a state of emergency precluding profit-making on medical supplies.

Salcedo had already been sentenced last December to four years in prison for his failed attempt to flee to Peru.