Assemblyman Fernando Villavicencio says that the Prosecutor’s Office could include in its investigation the new facts revealed in the report of the Inspection Commission.
The State Attorney General’s Office confirmed to this newspaper that a preliminary investigation (IP) is currently open on the case of the Unitary Regional Compensation System (Sucre). This investigation date of 2016, when the General Comptroller’s Office had delivered to that entity a Criminal Responsibility Report (IRP) that emerges from a special examination carried out by that agency on exports through the Sucre System, registered between the January 1, 2011 and June 30, 2013.
Dicho IRP, the existence of which was known only this week by a revelation made by the current comptroller Carlos Riofrío to the president of the Supervision Commission of the National Assembly Fernando Villavicencio, recommended that the Prosecutor’s Office investigate the criminal implications of 31 Correísmo officials, belonging to entities such as the Management, National Banking Directorate, International Services Directorate and the General Audit of the Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE), also from various dependencies of the Ecuador’s Customs Service (Senae), the Internal Revenue Service Directorate (SRI) and other intermediate dependencies.
Although normally these preliminary investigations by the Prosecutor’s Office have a validity of one or two years, depending on the crime, This investigation apparently was in a kind of “freezer” for five years: without an agile process, but without having proceeded with the archive either.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the 2016 IRP came as a possible crime of tax fraud and the fiscal agent in charge ordered the practice of several procedures. The Prosecutor’s Office reported that “the prior investigation (IP) is still open and in 2020 it became known to a new fiscal agent, who continues with the investigation.” He also clarified that “as the previous investigations have the reserve of law, it is all that can be referred to at the moment.”
The Sucre issue has taken effect again after the Audit Commission, chaired by
Villavicencio, will initiate an investigation in which it has been concluded that crimes of embezzlement, money laundering and organized crime were allegedly committed.
Among the findings of the Audit report that contains more than 10,000 pages and that was delivered in these days to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Comptroller’s Office and the Central Bank, are the possible financing of the campaign of former president Rafael Correa with money from fictitious exports, as well as the alleged use that would have been made of the International Free Availability Reserve (RILD) to anticipate payments to exporters Ecuadorians who did the fictitious operations. Additionally, from the Central it has been reported that There are resources from Ecuador that have not been returned by the Sucre Monetary Council.
It has also been established that the resources that supposedly arrived in the country through exports immediately went to tax havens, for the benefit of various companies and individuals allegedly related to money laundering.
In accordance with Villavicencio, with all these new elements, the Prosecutor’s Office has the opportunity to resume the investigation. For the assemblyman, the role of former prosecutor Galo Chiriboga in this case should also be investigated.
For Villavicencio, one of the key points of the investigation is precisely the use of the reserve. In this sense, he commented that The former manager of the Central Bank and current Superintendent of Banks, Ruth Arregui, explained in her appearance at the Assembly that in 2013 Ecuador’s position against Sucre was in surplus. And that at that time she proposed to take to the Monetary Council of Sucre the initiative that the compensations that were made for the operations did not wait six months as was established, but that this process lasted only two months “so that Ecuador should not wait so long to recover the committed resources ”.
Finally, from the Central Bank, its manager Guillermo Avellán has reported that there are some 2’309,736.5 that Ecuador contributed to Sucre from the Single Treasury Account that would be at risk. Avellán revealed that on several occasions they have requested the CMR to return the funds, without a positive response.
At the moment no There is clarity on whether Ecuador could receive those resources back in case it decides to leave Sucre, since the Bank for Economic and Social Development of Venezuela (Bandes), the bank administrator of the funds, has been sanctioned by European organizations that have carried out the seizure of the money. (I)
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