(Credit: PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNN Spanish) --
The until now Uruguayan vice chancellor, Carolina Ache, resigned from her position this Monday in the midst of a scandal that has shaken the government since August for the issuance of a passport to the Uruguayan drug lord Sebastián Marset, which allowed him to be released from prison. his arrest in the United Arab Emirates.
In a resignation letter addressed to President Luis Lacalle Pou, Ache informed him of his decision to leave office due to what he described as a "controversy surrounding the talks" held with the Undersecretary of the Interior Ministry on November 3, 2021, and whose content reached the press in recent days.
In those conversations, the number two of the Ministry that controls the Police, Guillermo Maciel, warned him that Marset, then detained in the United Arab Emirates for entering with false documentation, was a "very heavy and dangerous" drug trafficker.
In an interpellation carried out on August 22, Ache had denied knowing Marset's background when he authorized the issuance of the Uruguayan passport to the fugitive from Justice.
In her resignation letter, Carolina Ache states: "Today I understand that perhaps my mistake was to stick to what should be and legality —to grant that passport— trusting in the certainty that in any case the Ministry of the Interior had in its possession all the information to act, if that would have corresponded”.
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The now former vice chancellor belongs to the Ciudadanos sector of the Colorado Party, one of the five parties that make up the government coalition of President Luis Lacalle Pou.
The Ministry of the Interior, on the other hand, is in the hands of the pro-government National Party.
Meanwhile, President Lacalle Pou said, after the news of the resignation was made public, that he called Ache "by phone" and added to the journalists at a press conference: "Take advantage of this because I am not going to speak anymore, because I have already spoken Enough of all these facts."
He said that he maintained his support for the former vice-chancellor, but that "there are other issues that are in the courts and it is not up to me," he added.
From the opposition, on the other hand, the Broad Front considered that "the resignation of the vice chancellor confirms that information was hidden," according to Senator Mario Bergara.
Meanwhile, Senator Alejandro Sánchez added on Twitter: “This government lied to all of us to our faces.
The delivery of a passport to a prisoner drug trafficker is a very serious event, which they never assumed.
Despite the president's endorsement, Ache resigned.
We still don't know who else is involved in this act of corruption."
Uruguay