The Electoral Court analyzes hundreds of cases of people with Russian nationality who processed the civic credential before the Electoral Court, and seeks to determine if there is a connection between these documents and the criminal organization of false passports and documents for which he is charged with prison. former custodian of President Luis Lacalle Pou, Alejandro Astesiano.
To access the right of the Uruguayan civic credential, Russian citizens, who already had Uruguayan ID and passport by then, did the process under Law 16,021, which is interpretive of Article 74 of the Political Constitution.
The law states in its first article that “men and women born anywhere in the territory of the Republic have the status of nationals of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay”, and the following adds that “The children of any of the persons mentioned in the previous article also have said nationality, regardless of the place of their birth.”
Article 4 indicates that article 4 of the Constitution of the Republic must be interpreted in the sense that proximity must be understood as the performance of acts that reveal, in an unequivocal manner, the will of the person in that sense, such as, for instance:
A) Permanence in the country for a period of more than three months.
B) The lease, the promise to acquire or the acquisition of a
farm to live in it.
C) The installation of a trade or industry.
D) Access to employment in public or private activity.
E) Enrollment and attendance at a public study center or
Private, for a minimum period of two months.
F) Any other similar act demonstrative of the aforementioned purpose.
The justification of the extremes required in the preceding article 4 will be made before the Electoral Court which, once it verifies the fulfillment of, at least, two of the requirements (paragraphs A, B, C,
D, E or F), will proceed without further formality to the registration in the corresponding registry.
According to the newspaper El País, based on information from confidential sources, several of the people of Russian nationality who would be checked, and who processed the civic credential, had or tried to open bank accounts in different banks in Uruguay. In several cases it would have been verified that they wanted to process the identity card for that purpose.
In the investigation of this mega-scandal there is information that there are Russians (and some Mexicans) with open bank accounts in the country, which led to the elaboration of the investigative hypothesis that, potentially, there would be some connection with Astesiano’s criminal organization.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Gabriela Fossati, made requests for reports from the Foreign Ministry, Civil Identification, the Social Welfare Bank, the General Tax Directorate and the Electoral Court to cross-reference data and determine if the hypothesis is substantiated.
