The Bicameral Commission of Investigation on Money Laundering (CBI), published its final report last Tuesday. Among its conclusions, it reports that the Inter-institutional Unit to Combat Smuggling (UIC) is a weakened unit with no budget. In this sense, the necessary efforts must be made to strengthen and elevate this unit to a higher rank, providing it with special agents and its own budget. “This unit is key to combating smuggling, but it cannot continue to depend exclusively on the police,” reads part of the document.
Emilio Fuster, Executive Coordinating Minister of the Interinstitutional Unit for the Prevention and Persecution of Smuggling (UIC), expressed that he rescues the conclusions of the CBI regarding the tasks that are being carried out by the UIC.
“They emphasize that our unit is key to fighting smuggling. When I appeared, I informed them about how we are working independently of the inter-institutional coordination work, the UIC has 7 officials, with whom we carry out sensitive tasks for the purpose of combating smuggling, ”he said.
He argued that despite these limitations, they have obtained important results in terms of historical contraband in many cases.
“Smuggling in and out has been combated. not only smuggling, but also corruption, we had important operations such as ‘Tartufo’, where several officials from Ciudad del Este have been prosecuted and before that the dismantling of the Customs Technical Department of Specialized Surveillance (Detave), have been prosecuted to 20 officials. Here it is necessary to strengthen the UIC, to have a Senad model. that we have our own special forces, our own intelligence forces, with enough qualified men, to be sufficiently efficient in combating smuggling,” he stated.
Finally, he said that they had already presented an institutional improvement project at the beginning of 2020, however, due to the pandemic, it was postponed since the priority was to allocate resources to health.
“We at the UIC do not manage any budget, we depend on the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic, directly from them. Our task today is to coordinate actions with the different institutions that make up the UIC, such as the National Police, the Paraguayan Navy, Customs, Senave, MAG, some administrative and other operational institutions”, he stated.
