[JURIST] Ecuador's Supreme Court has upheld a 2006 ruling allowing charges against former Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa [official profile, in Spanish] for mishandling debt negotiations worth billions of dollars while in office from 2000 until 2003. The Court held Wednesday that Noboa should be charged as an accessory after the fact for his handling of negotiations which cost the country $9 billion. Noboa served 10 months of house arrest [BBC report] before being freed by the 2006 ruling.

Noboa spent two years in exile [BBC report] in the Dominican Republic but returned to Ecuador [JURIST news archive] after a March 2004 Supreme Court ruling exonerated him of pending charges. After his successor, former President Lucio Gutierrez [official profile, in Spanish], was removed from office [JURIST report] by Congress, Vice President Alfredo Palacio [official profile, in Spanish] assumed power and reinstated the charges. AP has more.