The plenary session of the National Assembly of Ecuador approved this Thursday a request to investigate the offshore companies of President Guillermo Lasso in tax havens, revealed this weekend in the so-called Pandora Papers. The resolution received 104 votes in favor and 24 against, and had been presented by the correista Unión por la Esperanza (UNES) with the intention of analyzing the suspicious economic movements of the president.
On Wednesday, seeking to stop a rain of criticism, Lasso announced his resignation from bank secrecy and even demanded that his wealth declaration be examined. From the opposition, the former presidential candidate Yaku perez filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate Lasso’s offshore accounts, while the former candidate Andres Arauz directly demanded that the president resign or be removed.
Investigation and request for resignation
The assemblyman Ronny Aleaga, who promoted the initiative, considered that “The answers that the president has given are not enough to reveal his ties with the Pandora Papers” and argued that the Assembly must intervene to clarify the facts. “The Ecuadorian people are attentive and vigilant about what we do and it is our duty to give them clear and transparent answers. Faced with these revelations we cannot be silent“, expressed Aleaga.
The request was approved after the documents were released on Sunday in which It is clear that Lasso was the owner of 14 off-shore companies until 2017. The Ecuadorian President He claimed several times that that year, when a legal ban was passed, he disposed of those properties.
But the opposition considers that a review from several years ago must be carried out to verify if Lasso evaded taxes in Ecuador when he had those properties outside the country. For this reason they insist that a more in-depth investigation be carried out by the Internal Revenue Service and other organizations, including the State Attorney General’s Office, before which the former indigenous candidate Yaku perez filed a criminal complaint against the president on Tuesday.
Pérez argued that It is necessary to investigate Lasso’s financial movements since 2013, when he was a candidate for the presidency for the first time, and not since 2017, year in which the law was reformed by means of a referendum. “We Ecuadorians are ashamed to have the president among the first figures of world leaders of tax evaders”emphasized the representative of the Pachakutik movement.
The former candidate of correísmo, Andres Arauz, went even further than Pérez and in an interview with Telesur asked that Lasso resigns or is removed from office. “We are scandalized by what happened, Ecuador is stained internationally,” said the young economist.
Arauz, who lost the ballot against Lasso on April 11, believes that the president has four grounds for which he should be prosecuted: “Attacking the nation’s democracy; tax evasion, something inadmissible in his capacity as president; exercising the figurehead with their own relatives, and committing perjury after swearing not to have property and lying about their companies and assets in tax havens. “
Lasso’s response
In an attempt to alleviate the media effects of the Pandora Papers scandal, Lasso requested on Wednesday in a letter to the State Comptroller to verify the patrimonial declaration which he presented before taking office in May and, to that end, “renounce bank secrecy.” The Ecuadorian Constitution establishes that public servants must make a declaration of assets at the beginning and end of their administration, and authorize the lifting of secrecy or secrecy over their bank accounts.
Lasso too made himself available to the National Assembly to answer “the questions they deem pertinent” on the investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The president sent a letter to the head of the Body’s Supervision Commission, Fernando Villavicencio, to express his willingness to clarify and answer questions about this investigation and for that he invited the members of that body to the Carondelet Palace, presidential headquarters.
From the ICIJ investigations, which involved senior leaders, athletes, artists and businessmen from dozens of countries, it was learned that Lasso got rid of a network of offshore companies that he had in tax havens before he was a candidate for the presidency. Specific, the current president of Ecuador was linked to 14 offshore companies created in Panama, the United States and Canada.
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