In the streets of a municipality the size of Solís de Mataojo – it has more than 3,000 inhabitants – nothing else is talked about. The mayor, Verónica Machado (National Party), filed a complaint against an official she trusted, whom he accused of having stolen from the municipality a little more than $600 thousand.
The official in question had access to all the municipal accounts and was in charge of making payments and income. In the last hours she was summoned to the police headquarters and she used the same argument as in the municipality: noted that it had been “hacked”. The money, which came out in various deliveries from the account, was transferred to different collection networks, sources from the Lavalleja Headquarters reported to The Observer. According to what Machado denounced, it was this woman, of her strict confidence, who collected it.
Officially, the headquarters reported in a statement that the case is being handled by the Departmental Directorate of Investigations. The complaint refers to a fraud and points out that the accounting area of The Lavalleja Intendancy managed to verify “atypical movements in the BROU account of the Municipality of the locality” that had been reported.
At the municipal level, an administrative investigation was launched. As for the judicial path, the official was summoned to testify next week with her lawyer, police sources said. The investigation is in charge of the Second Shift Prosecutor’s Office, which is currently occupied by Dr. Cecilia Saavedra.
“The truth is that we are very worried and very attentive. It is something very new, something like this has never happened here in our town, of this nature, and it throws you off a bit“, the councilman from the Front Amplio Sebastián Cañón told The Observer. “We detected that there were movements in the municipal current account that did not have a guarantee. It was not possible to verify the expense,” she said.
He also pointed out that they have no criticism on this point for the mayor. “I think she acted well, because she barely knew what was happening, she always wanted to get to the truth and denounce at all times,” she assured. Machado told The Observer that this Thursday they took a statement from both her and other officials in the framework of the administrative investigation, but she will not give more statements so as not to “hinder the investigation.”
On the other hand, Cañón explained that he, along with other public officials, also participated in the complaint that was filed with the Justice. Meanwhile, the administration is advancing agilely. He and more witnesses have already given their version of the events.
Four municipalities hit by corruption
Florencio Sanchez
In Florencio Sánchez, the city of Colonia that borders Soriano, the Mayor Alfredo Sanchez He was sentenced along with eight other people, including his two children and his wife. in 2021.
Under the name of Corrupt, The operation began to be investigated in 2018 based on the complaint of an individual and ended up unmasking a network of corruption by which the mayor, his relatives and officials exchanged food baskets or tickets for votes, kept seized motorcycles, used construction materials from the municipality for their own benefit. , among other irregularities that ended in conviction for the crimes of conspiracy to commit a crime, ideological forgery by a public official and fraud.
pains
In March 2021, the nationalist mayor of Dolores, Juan Andres Oronoz, for sexual offense against a minor.
He was also sentenced to make patrimonial reparations to the victim, a teenager whom he contacted through WhatsApp and asked for “photographs of sexual content.” Prosecutor Virginia Sigona then ordered the seizure of all his electronic devices and informed the Agesor portal that the contents had been deleted from the cell phone.
valentine
The Colorado mayor Tabaré Leivas, from Valentín (Salto), He was charged with arms trafficking in a case of cattle rustling. on April 2020. Along with him, his son and three other people were charged by the Justice for integrating a gang dedicated to cattle rustling.
Leivas was charged without imprisonment, At the request of the Salto prosecutor, Beatriz Protesoni, for the crime of internal arms trafficking, he had to establish an address and appear once a week at the Valentín sectional.
For his part, the mayor’s son was charged with the crime of cattle rustling with the same measures, but he was prohibited from approaching the property of the person who reported the cattle theft. The other three people were accused of cattle rustling and internal arms trafficking and were given the same sentence of reporting weekly to the police station.
San Antonio (Jump)
Martin Barla, Colorado mayor of San Antonio, He was charged in October 2019 with the crime of abuse of functions and sentenced a year later to 18 months of supervised release, he reported then Underlined. The mayor, who was in office at that time, got upset with some municipal workers who were carrying out road work because he understood that they should not be there, he got on a motor grader and began to crash into the mayor’s bulldozer.
The episode of violence motivated the administration to remove the machines from the town and the officials filed a criminal complaint against the mayor. The council members of the mayor’s office promoted a political trial and asked him to resign from office. The court ruling disqualified him from holding office for two years and imposed a fine of $120,000.
