The president of TABESA, José Ortiz, and the lawyer of former president Horacio Cartes, Pedro Ovelar, were in charge of dismissing each of the accusations made through the media in relation to a SEPRELAD report.
During the “Crossed Fire” program broadcast by the GEN channel, the tobacco businessman José Ortiz maintained that “there is a salad of lies and conjectures” in the report of the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money Laundering (SEPRELAD) released this Sunday through some media.
“The bad intention and bias of SEPRELAD is proven, their assessments are unprofessional, they have unconfirmed partial information,” he said.
He flatly denied that the companies that are part of the Cartes Group or the activities linked to former President of the Republic Horacio Cartes could be linked to a money laundering scheme.
In that sense, Ortiz said that they are in a position to evacuate each of the assumptions mentioned in the journalistic reports, in order to deny the different accusations that have been made in the last hours.
He cataloged this as a political attack, taking into account that Horacio Cartes is a preponderant person in the field of politics through Honor Colorado, especially considering that the presidential candidate of said movement, Santiago Peña, is leading the polls.
“We have reached a point that has never been reached before in Paraguay of using State entities for political, corporate and financial persecution,” said the president of TABESA.
For his part, the lawyer Pedro Ovelar mentioned that, by its organic law, SEPRELAD has the obligation to maintain absolute confidentiality in all the investigations it carries out, for which this leak violates the norms of the Paraguayan Penal Code.
“Any leak of data has a criminal responsibility,” he assured, opening the possibility that a process could be opened against the people responsible for disclosing the internal report of the state institution.
In that order of things, Ovelar confirmed that they are already analyzing possible legal actions that could be initiated against those responsible for leaking the report.
“Here there is an association of two journalistic groups, who are in coexistence with people from this government who are fighting for the candidacy of the Colorado Party and people from the opposition who are against Horacio Cartes because he is the person who must be lowered” , he expressed during the interview.
Ovelar also spoke of a manipulation of an institution as important as SEPRELAD, being the first time something like this has happened. “This is grotesque, it manipulates and filters information in a mediocre way, it tries to give shape to the stupid things that (Arnaldo) Giuzzio said,” he commented, recalling that the report was prepared after the request of the Prosecutor’s Office before the complaint made by the former Minister of the Inside a few months ago.
José Ortiz also mentioned that SEPRELAD can access the purchase and sales books and the invoices issued by the companies, although they have no way of knowing the actual content of the invoices, so they try to install the idea that between companies in the same group are selling cigarettes. “That is absolutely false.”
He explained that in certain business groups it is common to resort to so-called intercompany loans by companies with greater liquidity (such as TABESA) and others that need operating capital to make certain investments, so in this case they could be billing interest on loans with VAT included to said companies, as well as rental of premises, among others.
Regarding the accusations about sending money to Brazil, Ortiz explained that today it is TABESA’s main supplier of tobacco and that is why it is appropriate that money transfers be made through the banking entities authorized for this purpose, thus denying any type of of irregularity.
Ovelar also mentioned that the media that published the report present a legal activity as something illegal, referring to the fact that one company produces a certain product and another distributes it. “It is not that Cartes sells to Cartes, what happens is that it has a corporate structure and divides its distribution industry,” he said.
The lawyer considers that what SEPRELAD did is qualify but without having enough details regarding the movement of the Grupo Cartes companies, which is why this complaint finally ends up being unfounded.
Regarding the case of Mercury Tabacos, José Ortiz said that it is a medium-sized cigarette factory that does not have a tobacco processor, so TABESA sells them chopped tobacco so they can make their own cigarettes, denying that they are the ones who sell the product. finished.
In another order of things, he emphasized that TABESA is the only local company in the tobacco industry that exports to the American market, which involved a meticulous inspection and analysis process by the different states that make up the United States.
“When the end of this film is reached, everything that is written there will be clarified and dismissed, this when the internal elections of the Colorado Party or the general elections pass,” he sentenced.
