The Broad Front took the accusation of the former director of the Regulatory Unit of Communications Services (Ursec) Nicolás Cendoya with caution, while analyzing whether the case merits a pass to the Court of Political Conduct of the left coalition. Judge Fernando Islas granted the formalization request of the prosecutor Diego Pérez for three crimes of abuse of functions, and this Wednesday the precautionary measures to be applied will be determined.
“It is in the Judiciary. There is a process. We believe in the Uruguayan Justice, we are not the ones who stand in the plaza from power to demand that the Justice act in another way. It is another thing to share the ruling or not, and we are going to see it when we have the file before us,” he told The Observer the president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira.
Asked if they were thinking of referring the case to the Court of Political Conduct –a body that interceded, for example, in matters related to former Vice President Raúl Sendic–, Pereira replied: “We are going to analyze it where things have to be analyzed: at the Political Table. But we are not willing to question the Justiceneither the judges nor the prosecutors.” The leader added that they are going to analyze the file and that it is a “possible” measure.
After the news was known, the Colorado deputies Felipe Schipani and Sebastián Sanguinetti attacked through social networks against the statements of the MPP senators, Alejandro Sánchez and Charles Carrera, who in mid-2020 had claimed to believe in Cendoya’s innocence. On that date the controversy had been unleashed by a pass in commission of the ex-hierarch who had entered the Ursec offices to shred papers.
Schipani picked up Sánchez’s statement at a press conference on June 9, 2020, when the front-runner launched: “It is good to separate the issues that have to be investigated from what a circus is, and the files are electronic” . “There is an order in the Ursec that files cannot be left on the desks, and they must be destroyed. Therefore, what is being set up here is a great circus, and we are going to wait for the Justice to investigate,” he had maintained, when while he claimed to believe in his innocence.
consulted by The Observer This Wednesday, Sánchez clarified that he had not closely followed the issue, but pointed out: “The process has just begun. Nothing has been resolved yet, a trial was simply processed. So we have to wait.” “I continue to believe that everyone is innocent until proven otherwise, and this is only just beginning”he added.
“Anyone who knows how the law works in Uruguay knows that the formalization is a previous step in the investigation that the prosecutor does, presents the case and what the judge has to do is admit it if he understands that there may be a possibility, and there it will be seen “, emphasized the senator of the MPP.
In addition to Cendoya, the former secretary general of Ursec, Óscar Mecol, and the secretary of the former director were charged. Prosecutor Pérez held them responsible for three irregular acts: the destruction of documentation, the procedure by which the operation of the Palmitas FM radio station in Soriano was enabled, and the granting of a community radio station in Salto that operated with a power greater than that enabled.
Cendoya was the one chosen by the MPP to join the Antel board, but the legal plot led the former chief to ask the Political Table of the Broad Front not to assign him to that position and to appoint another person. “I understand that the importance of the indicated responsibility requires the presence of the political force in the conduction in order to make effective the control of what the government has done and try to reduce the dismantling and other damages to which the public company of all and all our compatriots,” he stated in a letter.
Eleven days later, the MPP elected the current opposition director, Daniel Larrosa, to the post.
