This Tuesday, the journalist Eduardo Preve revealed in the program Nada que Perder on radio M24 that “from the Presidency of the Republic the minister (Irene Moreira) was asked to act with discretion in a case linked to a worker of a cleaning company that provides functions in the Presidency and he also performed functions before in Parliament”.
As is known, Irene Moreira resigned last May, and the resignation was accepted by the Presidency of the Republic, on May 8, as consists on the official website. Until then, Moreira directly and discretionally processed the delivery of several homes, including to members of his Cabildo Abierto party, which earned him the removal of his position.
This last case revealed by the journalist Preve directly involves “the personal secretary of the president (Luis Lacalle), Horacio Gadea”, who “writes an email to the minister on May 18” requesting “everything that can be done” with the purpose of granting “a full rental subsidy” for housing to the cleaning worker mentioned above.
In addition to the aforementioned email, the communicator reported, there was “a previous call to the office of then-minister Moreira requesting that the State grant a full subsidy to this woman”, whose situation is socially “vulnerable”, who “had a debt in the clearing and that made it difficult” for me to rent.
“Even though this woman is in the clearing house, in this case the State assumes the responsibility of paying her rent, a total subsidy, if I remember correctly, of 15 readjustable units according to the resolution of the Ministry of Housing; Explicitly, beyond the socioeconomic conditions that this woman has, she ends up being given that subsidy because that discretionary request comes from the personal secretary of the President of the Republic, ”she added.
The cases of Irene Moreira: internal friction and external criticism
At the beginning of June, when the Minister of Housing and Territorial Planning (MVOT), Raúl Lozano, appeared before Parliament, the Broad Front said that the chief openly accepted that Moreira handed over 14 houses discretionally from July 2022.
“It was recognized that there are 14 cases from July 2022, to this day. And in the past, according to the authorities, none have been delivered,” said Frente Amplista senator Sebastián Sabini after this appearance. The fact that “none” have been delivered before July 2022 is not credible for Sabini and the FA, because in August 2022, the national director of Housing, Jorge Ceretta, sent a circular on the procedures for the awards.
“What circularity does is organize chaos. It establishes that these adjudications were going to be sent from the minister’s mail. It is totally unacceptable, an act of corruption and clientelism. We, as the Broad Front, were not satisfied with the explanations at all,” Sabini remarked.
“There have to be other cases. The President of the Republic was told that there were five. Before coming to the commission, they tell us that there are 14. We have information that there are 47 cases that were directly adjudicated. Today the minister denied them, ”he specified.
After Lozano sent Moreira to the front in this case, the intern at Cabildo Abierto has been more tense than usual. The current hierarch suspended all the processes initiated by his successor and formally requested that the director of Housing, Raúl Ceretta, who was from the Moreira faction, resign.
Ceretta is the one who gave the go-ahead, through a signed regulation, the housing awards requested by the Moreira secretariat.
