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and those who had not been sentenced. The guards also sought to extort him for
any reason.
When he was able to buy machinery to make frames and pictures, he was able to
earn some money. He had many financial problems with his wife, due to the
expenses she had to incur to visit him together with their daughter.
At the time of the detention, they took from him a suitcase with gold and gems that
were his property, as he bought and sold gems. This is why he had with him, that
day, samples of emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, rubies, with a purchase price of
US$135,000 (one hundred and thirty-five thousand United States dollars). The
agents also took away his wallet with 250,000 sucres (two hundred and fifty
thousand sucres), his credit card, his checkbook, everything that he had with him,
including his daughter’s identification card. His credit cards were used while he was
detained, and when he returned to France he found that he was in a “state of
prohibition” to have a bank account, because it had been emptied and there was a
US $6,000 (six thousand United States dollars) overdraft. He took several steps to
recover his property. The last one was to go to the Ecuadorian Embassy in France,
where he submitted to the Ecuadorian Consul a request to recover his belongings.
The Consul said that it would be processed through the Ecuadorian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, but nothing more happened. Before his detention, he sometimes
earned US$5,000 (five thousand United States dollars) a month, sometimes
US$10,000 (ten thousand United States dollars) as a gem merchant, and he stated
that he had no registration for his trade activities. He had no fixed income but he
enjoyed a very good standard of living. Both he and his family could go on vacations
whenever they wanted to, they could travel anywhere in the world; he had no
problems and no reason to be concerned.
Regarding his family relations, at the time of his detention his relationship with his
daughter Sarah was very good, they shared many things, such as music, and he
helped her to study. He also has a son, from a previous relationship, called Valerian
Edouard, but during the time he was detained he was never able to see him, and
now he feels that the relationship between them has changed; he believes that the
youth no longer trusts his father.
His wife took their daughter Lisianne to the prison, for Mr. Tibi to meet her.
Afterwards she took her every weekend and during vacations, even if he had to pay
the guards for them to remain with him in the prison a full weekend or even about
fifteen days. He felt desperation seeing his newborn daughter and his wife in the
cell.
Before being detained he was a “very happy” person, calm, with no problems, who
had a family, a home, and everything was going well, until one day everything broke
down, and he found himself in a situation that completely transformed him; he
became very mistrustful, and now it is very difficult for him to have normal relations
with people. He feels persecuted, he cannot work, and he cannot live normally. His
marriage suffered. He cannot have a normal relationship with his former spouse nor
with his daughters, in other words, the whole family suffered harm. He has no
communication with his son Valerian Edouard. His work plans in Ecuador were to
live calmly, peacefully, with his gems and his works of art. He had bought a piece of
land on the beach and he planned to build a tourist complex and live peacefully with
his family.
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