The Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police of Ecuador raided this Friday the offices of the state oil company Petroecuador and the Legal Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic in the framework of the investigation that follows the alleged corruption plot that operated in several public companies from the country.
During the early hours of the morning there were other previous raids on the homes of the general manager of the state oil company Petroecuador, Hugo Aguiar, of the former advisor of the Petroecuador Refining Management César Pazmiño and of the former legal undersecretary of the Presidency Marcos Miranda.
These proceedings were carried out based on a series of audios broadcast on Wednesday by the digital media La Posta in which those names were mentioned.
The Prosecutor’s Office reported that storage devices, a laptop, cell phones and documentation were seized that will be subjected to expertise and analysis.
The name of Pazmiño is mentioned in a recording attributed to María José Romo, cousin of a former minister of the Government of former President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021), which speaks of a public contract with an alleged overprice and distribution of excess money among a group of people .
Meanwhile, Miranda is mentioned in some audios referring to Mauricio Guim, former Undersecretary of Regulatory Development of the Presidency and former Secretary of the State Attorney General’s Office, who on Wednesday night was arrested when he tried to leave the country for Colombia , hours after the broadcast of the recordings.
In them, Guim boasts of his closeness to Jorge Orbe, one of the alleged interlocutors of the former president of the Public Companies Coordinating Company (EMCO) Hernán Luque, who is also implicated in the alleged corruption plot due to other audios that appeared weeks ago.
He also talks about his influence with the former general manager of the state Petroecuador Ítalo Cedeño to make “business” and mentions that he sees “direct route” to start operating in the National Electricity Corporation (Cnel) and Electricity Corporation of Ecuador (Celec), another of the two public companies that included the alleged corruption network.
After his arrest, Guim was released after being made available to the Prosecutor’s Office to testify and avail himself of his right to remain silent.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Petroecuador denied any corruption of the contracting processes mentioned in the recordings, some for being non-existent and others for having been deserted, and then filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation.
Meanwhile, Aguiar denied having participated in any meeting with suppliers and that his name is used for that purpose.
In this alleged corruption plot, he has also been mentioned as the alleged “godfather” of the network to the businessman Danilo Carrera, brother-in-law of the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, who has emphatically rejected the accusations.
Source: Gestion
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