The former custodian of President Luis Lacalle Pou, Alejandro Astesiano, would have illegally intervened third-party cell phones through spying and intelligence software, El Guardian, for which the Ministry of the Interior has a license to use.
Inquiries into Astesiano’s cell phone found chats in which they spoke of follow-up operations on truckers who transported soybeans and wheat in the departments of Río Negro, Soriano and Colonia. One of the conversations revealed a contact with an Argentine agricultural businessman who produces wheat and soybeans in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay.
The first exchange between Astesiano and this person took place on September 3, 2022, at 7:39 p.m., the Argentine being the first to write. The former presidential custodian responded four hours later saying: “The phones have not returned anything yet. We are already 18 days back.”
Subsequently, it forwards you a message saying: “Sir, we enabled 5000 matches of The Guardian with phones. No one shows any link or maneuvers and no one in a hundred days ago has contact with people from PREXPOL or with the aforementioned cell phones.
Heber denies that this is possible
The Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, came up against these revelations to deny them, asserting that it is not so easy to access the tasks for which El Guardian serves.
Heber asserted that it is a system that gives “full guarantees in this,” and that “when there is a journalist who says that Mr. Astesiano was listening, or is unaware, or is repeating a lie that Mr. Astesiano told in the Prosecutor’s Office ”.
And he reiterated: “It is not true, it cannot be done. Nobody can. Not even the President of the Republic can. Nobody can listen if it is not with a judicial order (…) That is the full guarantee of a listening system, which if it is not with a judicial order it is impossible to do”.
This Monday, Heber must appear before the Security Commission of the Senate, together with the directors of the Public Security Management System (SGSP) and El Guardian, to explain how the software works and is used.
