“The complaint raised by the former Minister of Tourism about our management and our conduct was filed. We always had a clear conscience and we put ourselves under the orders of the Prosecutor’s Office. The bad time damaged us and our families. Justice was finally done,” said the current senator and former Minister of Tourism.
This Monday Kechician and Liberoff attended the Executive Secretariat of the Broad Front to report on the complaint that former Minister of Tourism and current Colorado deputy Germán Cardoso had filed against former Tourism leaders of the Broad Front.
Cardoso questioned the purchase of a building for the ministerial headquarters and an agreement with the Armenian General Benevolent Union to use the facilities of its headquarters.
Cardoso’s complaint was made before a parliamentary Investigative Commission in which the management of Cardoso himself was analyzed for the purchase of advertising on public roads in a pandemic and the role of the foreign company Kirma in state purchases. This investigation is ongoing.
political attack
“It was a non-complaint. It was an attack on the Broad Front administration and a personal attack,” Kechichian said at a press conference.
He added: “We reaffirm that the strategy of mixing both investigations had the sole objective of muddying the field and that could not convince the prosecutor, due to the weakness of the arguments of wanting to incorporate everything in the same process.”
He stated that the filing of the complaint is a vindication of his management at the head of the Ministry, which took from 1,800,000 tourists to four million visitors, and from 500 million dollars to 2,300 million dollars in foreign exchange earnings, in addition to the decentralization of tourism throughout the country.
He stressed that the reported facts were investigated in depth, “both the direct purchases and the file linked to the Armenian General Benevolent Union, which is an institution that is 100 years old in the world and it is the first time in history that it was splashed for a complaint of this type.
In his turn, Benjamin Liberoff said that what happened in Deputies was a botched job. In his opinion, it was an event similar to those that occur in football when a footballer is expelled and he tries to “take an opponent with him.” Liberoff indicated that it was a “political attack.”
He said that in the Rendering of Accounts that they presented last year, the Ministry of Tourism did not execute 130 million pesos and in the current one they did not execute 250 million pesos.
For his part, the president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira, said that there is an obsession with trying to smear the management of the previous FA leaders.
He recalled that the complaint against Cardoso was opened by the complaint of a Colorado co-religionist who refused to sign a direct purchase and cost the then Minister Cardoso his job.
While Senator Mario Bergara stated that “it was always clear that the complaints against a management unanimously recognized as a high point of the Broad Front governments, were a smoke screen to try to hide carelessness in Cardoso’s management. Kechichian and Liberoff did not deserve the mess.
