The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay, Francisco Bustillo , resigned from his position this Thursday, after a series of messages in chats and audios involved him in an alleged attempt to hide information from Justice, which is investigating the granting of a Uruguayan passport. to drug trafficker Sebastián Marset. That passport, according to authorities, made it possible for Marset to be released from Dubai , where he was detained, at the beginning of 2022.
In a public letter of resignation, the now former chancellor declared that "things are not as they have been shown, but they are sensitive enough to have presented the immediate resignation to the President." And he added: "To dispel any suspicion that as a leader I could exercise certain interference over third parties, protected by the prerogatives of the position, I allow myself to inform that my peace of mind is such (regarding the legality in the granting of the passport), that I have submitted my resignation respective".
The resignation occurs after the weekly Busqueda broadcast a series of audio recordings - which are being investigated by Justice - in which what appears to be Bustillo trying to convince the then vice chancellor, Carolina Ache , to hide information present on her cell phone.
These recordings were made by Ache herself, who delivered them to the Economic and Complex Crimes prosecutor, Alejandro Machado , who is investigating the case. Ache declared before the prosecutor that he recorded the phone call out of "fear" of how the government was "acting," according to the file.
Ache told Busque that, privately, the minister asked him the opposite of what was formally requested by the Foreign Ministry, which was then carrying out an administrative investigation into the passport granted to Marset . "You lost your cell phone," the then-minister is heard saying to his subordinate in part of that conversation.
From these recordings and other revealed chats involving other members of the Executive Branch, Search concludes that the government "tried to hide from Justice the messages that Ache exchanged with (the Undersecretary of the Interior, Guillermo) Maciel" and that Bustillo " He thus tried to convince " Ache " not to hand over the messages he had exchanged with Maciel about the drug trafficker Sebastián Marset.
The chat in question between Ache and Maciel, from November 3, 2021, was sent when Marset was still detained in Dubai for carrying a false Paraguayan passport . In that message, number 2 of the Uruguayan Ministry of the Interior writes: " We can know what happened with this criminal detained in Dubai for a false document.He is a very heavy and dangerous Uruguayan drug trafficker.
