During the seventh meeting of the Puebla Group, which took place in Mexico City, this December 1, and was attended by 150 progressive leaders from Latin America, an international alert was issued to reject the political persecution against assembly members. Ecuadorians who prepared a report on the alleged participation of President Guillermo Lasso in practices of tax evasion and concealment of assets, reported through the Pandora Papers.
In this context, the Puebla Group emphatically rejected political persecution and the instrumentalization of judicial institutions in Ecuador in order to prevent this investigation from proceeding normally.
“The Puebla Group expresses its resounding rejection of all forms of political persecution and manipulation of justice that seek to silence or hinder constitutional investigation and accountability processes.”
In the same way, they warned that this “new wave of political persecution would seek the dismissal of the assembly members who are investigating the case, they even referred to cases of political violence that were reported in the country in recent weeks.
“In Ecuador, the assembly member of the Citizen Revolution, Mónica Palacios, has been the victim of political gender violence by an assembly member of the ruling party and Andrés Arauz suffered political, judicial and media retaliation based on false news.”
To conclude, the group recalled that the Government of Ecuador must guarantee freedom of expression and political opinion. In addition, the President should appear at the levels of accountability and make public and private information transparent that makes it possible to determine whether his financial activity is linked to the use of tax havens.
This document was signed by Ernesto Samper, former president of Colombia; Rafael Correa, former president of Ecuador; Marco Enríquez-Ominami, Coordinator of the Puebla Group and former presidential candidate of Chile; Aloizio Mercadante, former minister of Brazil and coordinator of the Puebla Group; Andrés Arauz, former presidential candidate of Ecuador; Celso Amorim, former Foreign Minister of Brazil; Carlos Ominami, former senator of Chile; Alejandro Navarro, senator of Chile; Ana Isabel Prera, former ambassador of Guatemala; Mónica Xavier, senator of Uruguay; Iván Cepeda, senator of Colombia; Esperanza Martínez, senator of Paraguay; Daniel Martínez, former presidential candidate of Uruguay and Carlos Sotelo, former senator of Mexico.
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