The Ecuadorian President seeks to demonstrate with the documents that he did not violate the law that prohibits candidates and officials from having assets in tax havens.
President Guillermo Lasso delivered to the Comptroller General of the State documentation on your patrimonial assets with the intention of proving that you did not breach the legislation that prevents you from having property or assets in tax havens when he registered his presidential candidacy in September 2020, amid the controversy over being peppered in the ‘Pandora Papers‘.
This was reported this Thursday (November 11, 2021) by the General Secretariat of Communication of the Presidency, when giving an account of a letter and documentation attached certificate that were delivered on Tuesday (November 9) to the Comptroller and they were received by the auditing entity the day before.
Among the apostilled and duly translated certificates, the agent presented documents on the dissolution of several companies: Bernini Foundation, Barberini Foundation, Bretten Holding, Da Vinci Foundation, Real Estate Foundation, Nora Group Investment Corp., Pietro Overseas SA, Brothers Investment Ltd., Positano Trade LLC and Tintoretto International Foundation.
It also denies in them any relationship with Banco Banisi and the trusts Bretten Trust and Liberty Trust, entities that were mentioned in the Parliamentary Commission that analyzed the information published in the ‘Pandora Papers‘, which points to Lasso maintains some type of personal or family connection with these companies.
“It is unpresentable that the Commission (of Constitutional Guarantees, Human Rights, Collective Rights and Interculturality) chaired by the Assemblyman (José) Cabascango has allowed itself to affirm, without any proof, that when I registered my presidential candidacy, I would have been involved in the prohibition, “he claimed Lasso in the letter.
As evidence, he said, he also presented the apostilled and translated certificates issued by the Trident Trust Company which, “in its capacity as trustee,” attest that it does not have and never had a “right of ownership or control in the Bretten Trust and Liberty US”.
The letter from the President of Ecuador concludes with the allegation of having “always complied with the law.”
Since 2017, Ecuadorian law prohibits public officials and candidates for popularly elected positions from holding assets or property in tax havens.
It was his own Lasso who applied in October to the Comptroller to verify the asset declaration that he presented before assuming office in May in an attempt to alleviate the media effects of the scandal of the ‘Pandora Papers‘.
The Parliamentary Commission that analyzed his actions in relation to the journalistic leak last Friday issued a report that indicates that the president could have breached the law by having properties and assets in tax havens.
Since the publication of the ‘Pandora Papers‘, Lasso has assured that he disposed of all his property in tax havens in order to present his candidacy for the Presidency, and his Administration has called the conclusions of the Legislative Commission “pathetically false”, which it accuses of not having respected “due process”.
The President twice declined to appear before the Commission, considering that it was an “ideological circus” designed to discredit him and destabilize his government.
Instead, he sent a letter explaining his position and the origin of his assets, and invited his members to question him at the government headquarters for being a president.
In parallel, the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office initiated a preliminary investigation for “alleged tax fraud” against Lasso, following a complaint filed by the former presidential candidate of the Pachakutik indigenous movement, Yaku Pérez.
The Chamber of Deputies of Chile decided last Tuesday to hold a political trial against the president of that country, Sebastián Piñera, in relation to the ‘Pandora Papers‘, for the alleged irregularities in the sale in the British Virgin Islands of a controversial mining project. EFE
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