Delgado, Endara and Duzac Had Met Previously

Gaston Duzac (left) next to Rafael Correa

On February 10, Gino Caicedo Urresta, former executive president of COFIEC presented a report to the COFIEC board that said that “on February 2 of 2012, I went to Guayaquil to have a meeting with Pedro Delgado, Francisco Endara and Gaston Duzac, in which the possibility of working with an Iranian bank.”

Gaston Duzac, an Argentinean businessman, was denounced by Pedro Delgado, president of the Central Bank (BCE), for illicit association for crime and fraud. According to Caicedo the meeting occurred after an encounter in January 12 of 2012, in which the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rafael Correa, Ecuador, participated. Currently the president has denied meeting Duzac and that his cousin already does not remember that alleged Argentinean businessman. However there still remain several messages between Duzac, Delgado and Endara, about investments in Argentina, there are also photographs of Duzac with Correa. In the edition of Vanguardia magazine, published yesterday, it shows that Duzac was awarded with an honorary doctorate in December of 2010.

The president defended those involved, two of them in custody already, and said that this “people could have ruined their lives, not because they are corrupt, but for being naïve, since they were prey of a conman,” referring to Duzac. AV