The Minister of Industry, Omar Paganini, and the president of ANTEL, Gabriel Gurméndez, appeared before the Senate on Wednesday for the audit carried out at the ANTEL Arena, which showed “irregularities” in the construction process of the multimodal complex.
The session was held without the presence of the Frente Amplio legislators, because they considered that the call to Sala had “only a media objective of political distraction”, and this “discredits Parliament and affects the image of an exemplary public company such as it is. ANTEL ”.
After reading a letter in which the Frente Amplio bench explained the decision not to enter Sala, the convening senator, Jorge Gandini, regretted the determination of the FA because “it does not cooperate or help the system of powers to function properly, the democracy and institutionality ”.
The call to Sala questions decisions of previous governments, he said, and regretted that the Frente Amplio parliamentarians were not present in Sala to defend the former president of ANTEL, Carolina Cosse.
He also said that the FA’s decision was “full of unsustainable excuses.”
“This instance was described as ‘self-interpellation’, which is a capricious interpretation, because the Constitution also establishes the call to the Chamber for the ministers to provide reports. This is a right that Parliament has, because it is carried out under the protection of Article 119 of the Magna Carta and not 147 (of the censorship mechanism) ”, he remarked.
He also said that the FA has described the summons to Paganini as a “media circus and fanciful”, and remarked that such expressions “disqualify the entire institution.”
Defense of public companies
On the other hand, Gandini assured that the government defends public companies in their entirety. “The only autonomous entity that was dismantled in this country was PLUNA due to mismanagement and it was not in this government.”
“When we defend ANTEL, we defend the public telecommunications company and the Uruguayans who own it. We also embrace the ANTEL Arena, whose continuity is not in dispute, because it is a magnificent sports and entertainment institution, and we did so when we transformed it into the main vaccination against Covid -19 in the country. We have no reproach. But it was done with public funds and we want to know how it was built, how much it cost and what will happen with its future administration ”, he remarked.
It rejected that ANTEL at the time had declared the entire ANTEL Arena process as secret for ten years, “that is, shielded until 2029.”
Complaints
On the other hand, he stated that there are new elements as the result of the recent audit. It indicated that all the complaints and observations that have been made on departures from the Law, violation of the Constitution, irregularities in the purchasing process, violation of the principle of specialty, contracting with abuses of the regulations and irregularities of all kinds have been confirmed. ”.
Gandini stressed that the audit carried out by the current government “was contracted with a transparent and competitive system” and the conclusions “are duly documented.”
He stated that the opinion of the Board of Transparency and Public Ethics (JUTEP) is based on “a serious and in-depth audit.”
On the other hand, he questioned the “extra cost of more than 63 million dollars for purchases, mostly direct, without competitive systems, and which have been observed by the Court of Accounts of the Republic.”
He denounced that “the secrecy that was established in each of these purchases by ANTEL has been confirmed.”
Previous audit
In statements to the press, the white legislator said that it has been confirmed that there was a “previous audit that was carried out expressly in a few days, which began a few days before the new authorities entered, which did not refer to the contents and was commissioned to an official of particular political confidence of the then president of ANTEL, Carolina Cosse.
He referred to a “concocted deception” such as “the business plan, to induce the population, the opposition and the Ministry of Economy at that time, that the work could be done, which was going to cost 40 million of dollars and I was going to earn 10 million dollars per year ”.
