The former custodian of President Luis Lacalle Pou, Alejandro Astesiano, spoke from the pretrial detention that he is serving after being charged as the alleged ringleader of a large network for the sale of false passports, in which a Russian citizen and a Uruguayan notary public are also charged.
In his conversation with the newspaper The countryAstesiano said that he does not have “any privilege” different from other inmates, and that he is not “the monster they created.”
From the National Party, the journalist Eduardo Berreneche tells him, there would be voices that assert that “he bit the president’s hand” by being inserted in a large criminal organization that sells false passports. “I heard that there are people who are saying that. Now they don’t know me, when I’ve worked with them in elections. People who say that I bit the president’s hand… I did not bite his hand. I think many people spoke before waiting for the end of the tax investigation, ”he replied.
He denied having deleted his criminal record from his computer, which he asserts would have been “foolishness”: “The support that a computer from the Presidency of the Republic has is total. Later they said that I was doing criminal maneuvers from the computers of the Presidency. I have put up with a lot of nonsense. also suffered. I have children, family, parents and my sick mother.”
“I don’t know them”
Prosecutor Gabriela Fossati has said that “tens, hundreds or thousands of birth certificates” for Russian citizens had been falsified, to which Astesiano commented: “I don’t know if it’s that much. I don’t know if there are other people involved. I never did a procedure for these people (the notary public Álvaro F. and the Russian agent Alexey S.). I could have said ‘let me see, let me talk’. Damn the time I gave my phone to him (refers to the notary). With Alexey I had no deal. The one who called me was the notary”.
He also denies being close to the Uruguayan notary public and the Russian processor, or to the former Uruguayan consul in Moscow, Stefano Di Conza.
“First I met the notary through a friend and then through Alexei. I met them after talking for five or ten minutes. They are saying a lot of things that are not true. They are selling a lot of smoke. They target me because they have the content of my phone. I have no relationship with the consul either (Stefano Di Conza), the one that just fell. I insist, there was never anything, ”she remarked.
