The criminal judge Fernando Islas will be in charge of defining whether to give rise to the request of the prosecutor Diego Pérez of impute the former director of the Ursec Nicolás Cendoya for three crimes of abuse of functions. Along with the former chief, the prosecutor also asked to charge the former president of the Ursec, Gabriel Lombide, for abuse of functions; and for co-authorship of the same crime, Cendoya’s secretary and Oscar Mecol, former secretary general of Ursec.
as he knew The Observerthe hearing to formalize the case is scheduled for 9 am this Tuesday.
The resolution of the case was delayed for more than nine months because Cendoya’s defense raised the nullity of the proceedings and argued that the case should not be the responsibility of Organized Crime, where cases of corruption of hierarchs are dealt with. That argument was rejected by an appeals court, but it did accept that the case leave the orbit of Organized Crime and go to a common criminal court, so it fell to the Islands.
Prosecutor Pérez understood that Cendoya and the other leaders are responsible for three irregular events: the destruction of Ursec documentation, the procedure by which the Palmitas FM radio station in Soriano was authorized to operate, and the granting of a community radio station in Salto that operated with a power greater than that authorized.
The three irregularities
The president of Ursec, Mercedes Aramendía, denounced the destruction of the organization’s documentation to the Prosecutor’s Office. On Monday, June 1, 2020, a former official of the agency entered the building, removed and allegedly destroyed documentation from the General Secretariat in a shredding machine.
Along with the complaint, videos were provided showing the lawyer – who had been an advisor to Cendoya – entering the area of the General Secretariat (where there are no cameras) and leaving with a bag and other documents in hand. The evidence in the possession of the Prosecutor’s Office indicates that the official entered the office of Cendoya’s secretary. After a while he left that office and minutes later he returned with the secretary.
Linked to that case, the prosecution charged three service officials, after it was proven that they leaked information from the criminal complaint to those close to Cendoya who then sent the information to the former director.
The second fact for which prosecutor Pérez understood that the three former Ursec leaders are responsible – Lombide and Cendoya as authors and Mecol as co-author – is for allowing a Soriano radio to operate despite the fact that it had been in violation.
According to an administrative investigation that was provided to the prosecution, the Ursec inspectorate had closed the Palmites Radio and had seized the transmission equipment after verifying that the radio was operating without authorization, but the officials forced the inspectors to return the equipment so that they could continue on the air.
Lastly, the prosecutor found the ex-hierarchs responsible for setting up a community radio station in Salto. As reported by Bemba FM, it began operating after a resolution signed by the then president Tabaré Vázquez on October 5, 2015 and ceased operations on January 5 of this year.
According to the Santo y Seña program, the radio broadcast “with a power 10 times higher” than that which a medium would have allowed.
Cendoya had been the name chosen by the Popular Participation Movement (MPP) to act as director of Antel on behalf of the Broad Front. However, the Executive Branch postponed the request for permission to the Senate until the criminal investigation was resolved. Finally, given the delay in the case, Cendoya asked the Broad Front to desist from proposing it.
