The Deputy Secretary of the Presidency, Rodrigo Ferresdeclared this Tuesday in the prosecution for the cause Katoen Natie and claimed that for 10 years the Broad Front government “allowed a company to operate in the port without an enabling title from the port law,” he said. It was “to the detriment of the Uruguayan State, outside the law. It’s a shame, and that’s what we came to tell the prosecutor,” he said.in statements to the press.
“When we took over the government we found ourselves in an illegal and irregular situation (…) By all accounts it has been a shame,” he added..
The hierarch defended the agreement that the government of Luis Lacalle Pou reached with the Belgian company Katoen Natie. “We celebrated a very good agreement for the country, we adjust port operations to law. The port law had been violated in previous administrations and a company had been allowed to operate, outside the law,” he insisted.
For Ferrés, “the previous authorities should make a self-criticism, look inside and say: what happened, why did we get to this situation”. He argued that the current government extended the port concessions in compliance with the law.
“We’re here to give you a testimony to the prosecutor of what happened in previous administrations with manifest illegality,” he claimed.
Ferres appeared atbefore the prosecutor for Economic Crimes Gilberto Rodríguez for the complaint of the Broad Front about him concession contract for the specialized container terminal signed by the government and Katoen Natie in 2021.
Ferrés provided legal advice to the government during the contract negotiations, since March 2020. “Here I was the one who advised. I made an internal legal report that was a work roadmap that we later delivered to the Senate Transportation Committee. There I explain all the legitimacy of the agreement, from the extension of the term to the norms that were violated,” said the deputy secretary in an interview with The Observer.
The government work team for the negotiation of the concession was made up of Ferres; the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber; the undersecretary of the MTOP, Juan José Olaizola; and the president of the ANP, Juan Curbelo.
The main intention of the government was Avoid a $1.5 Billion Judgment with which Katoen Natie had warned the government for breaches of the contract signed in 2001, due to the activity of the Chilean company Montecon in the public docks of the terminal.
