QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) -- Ecuador's anti-corruption office requested
                  Thursday that former president Jamil Mahuad and six economic advisors be
                  prosecuted over a March 1999 decree he issued freezing bank accounts.

                  Ramiro Larrea, president of the anti-corruption office, told a news conference
                  the attorney general would decide whether to prosecute Mahuad, who was
                  deposed in a coup in January, on charges of abuse of executive power and
                  violation of constitutional law.

                  Overwhelmed by strikes, bank failures and runaway inflation, Mahuad froze
                  between $3.2 billion and $3.6 billion in assets in March 1999 to try to stop
                  speculation against Ecuador's currency, the sucre.

                  The impoverished Andean country of 12.4 million people also partially defaulted
                  on its $13 billion public sector foreign debt in 1999. Ecuador's gross domestic
                  product contracted 7.5 percent in 1999, and efforts by Mahuad like the freeze on
                  deposits helped trigger massive protests that led to the coup.

                  Mahuad's successor, President Gustavo Noboa, has since junked the
                  inflation-plagued sucre, designating the U.S. dollar as the official currency.

                  The anti-corruption office charges also cite ex-finance minister Ana Lucia
                  Armijos and ex-bank superintendent Jorge Egas Pena, among others.