The president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira, requested the resignation of the ministers of both Foreign Affairs, Francisco Bustillo, and Interior Minister, Luis Alberto Heber after the disclosure of chats by the undersecretaries of both portfolios where they alluded to the dangerousness of the drug trafficker Sebastián Marset .
“We are concerned that President Lacalle is undervaluing democratic health problems,” he said. “They already knew that he was heavy and dangerous. There is an incredible negligence“. “In this country no one resigns and when there are problems with this institutionality The ministers would no longer have to be for which the Broad Front considers that they should resign or the president should ask them to resign“. “If the government does not take these measures, it will take charge of a democratic health that will worsen,” he added.
In turn, the Frente Amplio senator Mario Bergara called for the departure of the vice chancellor, Carolina Ache and the Undersecretary of the Interior, Guillermo Maciel, after the disclosure of the chats in which they referred to Marset prior to the issuance of his Uruguayan passport with the who managed to get out of prison in the United Arab Emirates.
“We had already said it in the interpellation. We believe that so many foreign and interior ministers should not be in their posts. But with these new chatsat least, it is clear that the undersecretaries should not continue in their positions“, said the Frente Amplista senator, Mario Bergara this Wednesday at a press conference.
“His role was very clear, very explicit. In the case of the vice chancellor it is very clear. That of the Undersecretary of the Interior also because basically the passport ends up being issued by the Ministry of the Interior, even though they themselves thought that he was a dangerous and annoying drug trafficker and that it would be “terrible” if he were released because of the passport. These are steps that really, in our vision, cannot continue“, he assured.
In turn, the senator said that the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, is lying when he says that there was no possibility of not granting Marset a passport. “Here what there are are political decisions to have given a passport when it could not have been given. Again the president repeats, thinking that by repeating it becomes true, when it is not so, that they were obliged to give the passport to Marset. That is false. We base it on questioning. The 2014 decree itself enabled not to hand over the passport,” he said.
“There were political decisions involving the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior, where the two vice ministers played crucial roles in this exchange, in addition to the meeting of the vice chancellor with Marset’s lawyer a few days before it was sent to him, expressly with an exceptional mechanism, the passport to Marset. There are political responsibilities and we therefore believe that there must be political consequences“, he sentenced.
The Undersecretary of the Interior, Guillermo Maciel, warned Vice Chancellor Carolina Ache in the first days of November 2021 on dangerousness of drug trafficker Sebastián Marsetwho was being held in a Dubai jail at the time and was seeking to obtain a Uruguayan passport.
The conversation between Ache and Maciel begins with a message from the head of the Interior. “Hello Caro, we can know what happened to this criminal arrested in Dubai for a false document. He is a very dangerous and heavy drug dealer. (We want) to know if he is still detained or if he was released, which would be terrible”, Maciel wrote on November 3, 2021.
“Hello, let me find out. KissAche replied.
The talks, as reported by La Diaria and confirmed The Observer, They arise from the file being processed by the Administrative Litigation Court, to which the Broad Front appealed to demand all the documentation of the drug trafficker who was released in the United Arab Emirates for having Uruguayan documents and a consular letter from the Embassy of Uruguay in that country. Is had been requested by the lawyer Alejandro Balbi and was presented on October 31, 2021.
Lacalle Pou referred to the issue on Tuesday and said that the issue “will be resolved in court.” “It has all the elements, the administrative investigation by the Foreign Ministry and It has the elements for which it gives me peace of mind that there was no concealment and that the truth was told“, he assured.
For Lacalle, “unfortunately”, it was up to him to give Marset the passport despite the exchanges between Maciel and Ache. “Unfortunately, according to law, you had to give him the passport”held.
