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Moreno says to ignore illegal practice in presidential campaign, after complaint
Posted On 06 Jun 2019
Ecuadornews:
The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, said on Wednesday to ignore any illegal financing practice in his presidential campaign in 2017, after a journalist investigation claimed he received seven million dollars in donations from different entities.
“If some corrupt practice of the previous government was used in my campaign, it was not with my knowledge, much less with my consent,” the Ecuadorian president wrote in his official Twitter account.
And went further to ensure that “the people mentioned must provide all their cooperation to determine the truth of the assertion.”
The journalistic report was published on Tuesday by the portal “Thousand leaves” and “The Source”, prepared by journalists Fernando Villavicencio, Christian Zurita and Cristina Solórzano, under the title “How was the Lenin and Glas campaign financed?
The investigation focuses on the presidential campaign of Lenin Moreno, who concurred with former Vice President Jorge Glas, in prison, convicted of illicit association in the scheme of bribes of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
According to the same, Ecuadorian and foreign private companies, and public institutions, donated irregularly around seven million dollars to the campaign of Moreno and Glas in the elections held in 2017, which required a second round.
Moreno demanded today in another trine a “deep investigation to the corresponding instances” and censured that “a single press publication is not enough to establish the truth, but the full truth must shine”.
The Ecuadorian leader, who has made the fight against corruption spearhead of the policies of his Executive, said that “transparency and legality are key to strengthening democracy, which is our primary goal.”
The portal that published the investigation uncovered last month the case called “Green Rice”, which analyzed the alleged irregular financing of the political movement Alianza País, when it was led by Correa, and that involved, among others, the Brazilian firm Odebrecht.
The Attorney General’s Office has echoed these investigations and two ex-staff members of the Constitutional Court and ex-advisors of Correa have been tried and in custody since last month, in relation to the legal case.
This investigation points to the fact that the previous government received contributions worth 11.6 million dollars in bribes from national and international companies to which the Ecuadorian State awarded contracts. (I)
