Journalist Gabriel Pereira interviewed on Wednesday santiago gonzalezdirector of Coexistence and Citizen Security of the Ministry of the Interior, for the program En la mira (VTV).
The conversation between the two ended with various crosses for issues like offset by Richard MarcenalDurazno Police Chief, and various police chiefs during the current administrationin addition to the investigation into drug activity Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia in prison and the involvement of the former Police Director Mario Layera.
The interview became tense after the program contacted by telephone the president of the Association of Tax Magistrates of Uruguay, Willian Rose, whom Pereya consulted about the possible changes in the name of the crimes in the Public Security Management System (SGSP).
The VTV and Radio Sarandí journalist accused that in Durazno the name of the crimes was made up, a fact for which Marcenal is investigated. Pereyra recalled that the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, told Parliament about this case that prosecutors are the ones who have the last word in this matter, but Rosa denied that situation.
Peach and made-up crimes
After contact with Rosa, Pereya asked González again who names the crimes in the SGSP, and remembered that “(Fabricio) Fagúndez (in charge of the Management System) had to tell Marcenal’s right-hand man not to be so daring and not to ask him to change the name of a crime”and later affirmed that Marcenal had been displaced as head of Durazno because he was being investigated, but the director of the Interior he denied it.
Gabriel Pereyra (GP): You they are missing the truth.
Santiago Gonzalez (SG): I am not missing the truth. You invited me to an interview that you did a sub interview, that you could have told me.
GP: Why do I have to tell you? Does it bother you that you have been exposed?
In the middle of the discussion, González told Pereyra: “You speak to yourself. He is the only journalist who has touched me in my life who speaks to himself.”
“The SGSP has many controls. A Durazno policeman, the one who put in the first gear, does not end up saying “that’s perfect”. It can be modified by a team that constantly monitors to see if that event is the same as what happened, and if the name that the event bears is the same as the one that must be given. Are controls on controls”González explained at that moment, after Pereyra told him to speak.
Then the director of Coexistence again targeted Pereyra: “If you want to say, because it is what you want to say, that we manipulate data, I say no, under no point of view. I know no, but you think so.”
The driver of En la Mira showed him a case of an assault by a person on a premises with a firearm, which according to Pereyra “It is a robbery”, something that he believes “anyone knows”, but it was labeled as a “theft”. “There is another who analyzes it, sees it, checks it and can correct it, Gabriel. You think that this is an anarchy that nobody commands, and (that) we want to lower crime by lying,” González criticized for his part.
The hierarch recriminated Pereyra that He has said “a thousand times” that the Ministry was lying, and denied that they did, both the portfolio and Heber. “Yes, but when he went to Parliament to say that the last typification was set by the prosecutor, there you have Rosa saying no, that the SGSP registers what the police put”.
the dome
“I don’t believe in the policemen that you put in many places, Santiago”Pereyra told the director of Coexistence, after being accused of not believing in “the institution”. González asked him if he believed that the policeman who wrote down the criminal case that showed him a theft “was the boss,” and Pereyra replied that “The bosses who put in there is one accused of the Astesiano case, another is being investigated for the Astesiano case.”
The journalist asked if it was not good to change these hierarchs so that the prosecutor Gabriela Fossati, in charge of the Astesiano case, “could count on a credible police force.” “You are being investigated and the prosecutor has to use the police as a tool who has to investigate her being her number 1 and her number 2. Don’t tell me it’s not complicated for the prosecutor.”
At that time Santiago González criticized the media treatment of the Henry De León case, director of Company Inspection who was removed from his position due to the Astesiano case, and later his case was filed. The conversation quickly turned to the changes in police chiefs in the current administration.
SG: if it were up to you they would all have to be run, they would all have to be run. You asked for it 36 months.
GP: How many police chiefs have changed since the start of the government?
SG: The necessary ones.
GP: How many? More or less 16 between…
SG: And what is the problem?
GP: That you are the ones who put them up and had to run them.
Layera: “Each one the group of friends they want”
The director of Coexistence pointed against Pereyra for understanding that he says that “the best” in the Ministry of the Interior “was the other”, in reference to the previous Frente Amplio administration, and snapped that some of the previous authorities “Now they are half involved with some little topics, which would be good if they also talked about it.”
Specifically, Gonzalez recalled the case of “el Cuini”, Gerardo González Valenciaof which they are investigated his meetings with the Italian mobster Rocco Morabito before he escaped from the Central Prison in 2019, and the implication of Mario Layerawho initially testified against former Interior Minister Eduardo Bonomi.
“Does it seem good to you that I throw the wolf at a minister who is not there? Does it seem good to you? Is that the policeman that I want for my country?”the chief asked the journalist.
“I’m not even accusing, what I’m saying is that his defense, Gabriel, because neither you nor I are idiotswe are speaking well, correctly, of things we know, Do you think it’s correct that I say ‘no, I didn’t know anything’?“Gonzalez told him.
Pereyra wanted to interrupt the director’s statement, but he continued: “I know you’re going to defend him, that he’s your friend, just like Leal. Each group of friends they want. He blamed Bonomi.”
GP: He told her that he was responsible.
SG: And he was responsible for filing a complaint if he was a public employee. He did not report it.
