The President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, and his ex-partner, Lorena Ponce de León, were summoned and testified in the case of the former presidential custodian, Alexander Astesianowho is charged as the alleged ringleader of a large structure for the sale of false passports from Torre Ejecutiva, and of other alleged crimes such as use of the state apparatus for various possibly illegal tasks.
The prosecutor handling the case, Gabriel Fossati, already took a statement from Lacalle, which took place on December 26 at the Suárez y Reyes presidential residence, but this was only made public on January 3.
On the 29th, she also took a statement from Ponce de León, who would also be in the middle of this case: in December it was learned that Astesiano would have watched her in July 2021 and would have obtained information on a trip she was about to make; By then, she was already separated from the president.
The cause of why Fossati decided to take the statements on those dates is unknown, since by then the judicial fair had begun. The President of the Republic has the right to have a statement taken at his place of work, or to submit a document to the Prosecutor’s Office.
At the end of November, the Secretary of the Presidency, Álvaro Delgado, and the Deputy Secretary, Rodrigo Ferrés, had also testified as witnesses. Other officials are being investigated, such as the director of Police Intelligence, Claudio Correa, who was the one who arrested the former presidential custodian at the residence of Suárez and Reyes on September 25 when he arrived from a trip to Costa Rica in the company of Lacalle Pou and his family.
Alejandro Astesiano, who has been linked to the Lacalle family for decades, was accused of assuming marital status, criminal association and influence peddling, in a case of falsifying documents to issue Uruguayan passports from the Executive Tower and which were sold to Russian citizens. With the accusation, the prosecutor managed to have him placed in pretrial detention.
