Previous Story
Ricardo Rivera, uncle of Vice President Jorge Glas, was the Telconet nexus with Chinese group and Odebrecht
Posted On 15 Jan 2019
Ecuadornews:
At some point Mr. Ricardo Rivera asked me about the project (submarine cable) and I (Tomislav Topic) explained it to him. Weeks later, Mr. Rivera told me that he had some Chinese investors who might want to invest in the project. ” This is the first time that Rivera, uncle of Vice President Jorge Glas, is appointed in the free and without swearing-in version delivered last July 17 by Timoslav Topic, manager of the telecommunications company Telconet, to the public prosecutor Diana Salazar, within the fiscal instruction for the crime of illicit association by the Odebrecht case.
According to the file, the Telconet project gained strength when another, from AT & T, “collapsed” and left the National Telecommunications Corporation without cable.
“Mr. Rivera asked us as a commission for having put in contact with those investors a series of links for the satellite channel that he has, to which we agreed and we have given it in an amount of $ 5.7 million, from the 2009 until 2017, “said Topic.
According to Topic, in 2009, Rivera asked for links and in 2010, others, as a “commission” for a business he had gotten with Odebrecht and Glory. He explained that the first was $ 1 million and the second, about $ 4 million.
The negotiation with the Chinese was in charge of his son, Jan Topic, in 2012, through Glory International.
In another point, Tomislav Topic said that in 2010 Rivera said he could “sell Odebrecht international capacity to Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama on the old Pan American cable.” Once Topic mentioned that the STM1 (a transport module) could cost close to $ 2 million, Rivera would have considered selling it for $ 4 million and keep the difference. That was accepted by Topic.
The contract was not signed with Rivera. Despite having an advance of $ 1,980,000, Telconet reserved the capacity. The problem, Topic pointed out, was that the deposit would not have come from Odebrecht but from Compañía del Sur.
While it was clear what had happened, Rivera would have told Topic if he could give him something of the commission. Topic’s answer was no that “the contract was in the air”.
“Then they told us that Odebrecht was in trouble. When I heard about the possible link between Ricardo Rivera and Odebrecht, we checked … and we put contingents into account ($ 1,980,000), “Topic told the Prosecutor’s Office. In the final part of his version, he said he asked to check the Telconet payments to see if any appear in the name of Rivera or Glas Espinel. There was no transfer in this regard.
Tomislav Topic said that if Rivera gave Telconet accounts, he did it without authorization or “he took my name to give the accounts of Telconet and abused my trust”.
On his side, in Guayaquil, Glas said yesterday that he knew that “some kind of private business has been done”, about which he did not have clarity, “that is why it is very important for the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate.”
Did you know about the delivery of this money? The journalists asked. “Not at all. I have no knowledge of the relationships between (Tomislav) Topic and Ricardo Rivera. ” He added that he will go to the call of the prosecutor Salazar to render his free and voluntary version, scheduled for next August 9. (I)
