The millionaire business of Tabaré Vázquez's son that would explain the support of Uruguay to Nicolás Maduro's regime

Uruguay, the Switzerland of Latin America, with a tradition of respect for democracy and institutions generally above average South America, surprised many of its own citizens and those of the rest of the continent because of its support for Nicolás Maduro's autocratic regime.

No one is unaware of the political sympathies and the many trade agreements that the Broad Front with Chavismo has concluded during its 14 years of government. Nevertheless, many observers were amazed when, in August 2017, Uruguay decided to be marginalized from the formation of the Lima group. It was, with Bolivia's Evo Morales, the only country in South America not to participate in the group of 14 American countries that are trying to deploy a last joint effort to find a democratic solution to the Venezuelan crisis.

Even stranger was that while the government of Tabaré Vázquez held a grueling silence on the growing repression and the final political and economic decline of the Chavista regime, another comrade of the Broad Front and former Chancellor of the Government of José Mujica, Luis Almagro, led by the OAS General Secretariat, the regional pressure exerted against Maduro, who has not hesitated to describe it as "dictator" ignoring the legality of the elections in which he was re-elected.

This tension finally ended last December Broad Front's decision to expel Almagro from the party. A few days later, on January 10 of this year, Uruguay again gave the shocking note when It is one of the few countries in the region to have sent a manager to seize Maduro.

While the main Uruguayan opposition parties have repudiated the position of their government and supported acting president Juan Guaidó, many are wondering why this unwavering support from the Vázquez government is due to Maduro.

Some badysts suggest looking back a few years and put the magnifying glbad on Javier Vázquez, the second of four sons of the Uruguayan president.

Engineer by profession, Vázquez Jr. advised various Uruguayan software companies. From the year 2000, he went to Venezuela several times to close the businesses of his clients with the government of Hugo Chávez. From 2005, with his father already in the chair (his first term was from 2005 to 2010), these trips intensified. The Venezuelan government had decided to use free software for public administration and the president's son saw a "opportunity", according to the Judicial Office of December 2008, in the investigation opened in response to the complaint of the Colorado MLA at the time Washington Abadala on irregularities in business between Uruguay and Venezuela.

Vázquez listed in court the companies he helped to clarify: the computerization of the public company communication CGV telecom for an amount of USD 62 million; licenses and training at the Ministry of Science and Technology for $ 4,500,000 ; the company Montevideo comm has concluded a contract for the administration of portals by 1.200.000 USD; Geocom loaded $ 2.8 million for a management system for town halls and Artech Consulting has obtained two other contracts for $ 3.5 million and $ 670 thousand.

In the lawsuit, Vazquez acknowledged that he had participated "in the investigation of the technical requirements, the working hours and the technical solution" so that the Uruguayan companies could conclude their contracts in Venezuela and pay afterwards. their "professional services".

The cause took a tragic turning the following year. Deputy Abdala had asked the accountant Eduardo Gómez Canon, who had traveled to Caracas with the group of Uruguayan software developers on a Pluna flight promoted by the government to enter into agreements in Venezuela, to testify at the last minute. marginalized contracts. " Now, the Uruguayan president's son is a millionaire with only one company that was mine", Canon had advanced to the press.

June 10, 2009, Canon seemed dead at stop 34 of Playa Brava in Punta del Este. He was wearing blue jeans and white sneakers. The case was clbadified as a suicide. The complaint against Vázquez was filed soon after at the request of the prosecutor Juan Gómez, who felt that "it is not proven" that the son of the president "enjoyed a privilege because of his relationship ".

This story was forgotten until the Uruguayan weekly of last year Research He examined the documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack & Fonseca, filtered in the framework of the Panama Papers investigation and found that a representative of Javier Vázquez opened accounts in a Panamanian bank in the name of the company Conibel S.A. in which I expected to receive between "two and five transfers of up to $ 300,000 for the payment of their advisory services"The weekly had already revealed two years ago that the president's son had also operated two accounts in tax havens.

Former Mexican Foreign Minister and intellectual Jorge Castañeda has attempted this week to explain in a Televisa program the reasons for the support that his country and Uruguay have offered to Maduro. With regard to the country of South America, he had no doubt: "In this case, there is a very complicated personal problem, which is the one the son of President Tabaré (Vázquez) did a lot of trade in Venezuela andn cyber problems, et cetera, and it's muddy up to the neck with Venezuelan tranzas"And Venezuelans and Cubans know it, and every time Uruguay goes a little further, it squeezes it."

"One more time, the political affinity and commercial ties of some people close to powerthey have Uruguay in the small group of countries that do not condemn the Maduro regime. Once again, they do not represent the Uruguayan popular sentiment, "said senator and presidential candidate Luis Lacalle Pou, whose rival to the national party, Jorge Larrañaga, expressed himself in the same direction:" huge shame and sorrow for the position of the Uruguayan government to be next to a dictatorship. Vázquez, unfortunately, does not interpret Uruguayan society when he rubs shoulders with dictator Maduro. "

The same thing happened on the sidewalk in front of the Colorado Party. "For what the Uruguayan government recognizes Maduro? Throw our republican traditions to the sea. Unjustifiable, "said pre-candidate Ernesto Talvi, while former president Julio María Sanguinetti complained of the lack of condemnation of the" dictatorship of Maduro ":"Do not speak clearly on this issue does not maintain a traditional position of the country but the opposite" he lamented.

Héctor Schamis, professor at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, also badociated the activities of Vázquez's son to "the end of the Stalinist purge"that the Frente Amplio gave to Almagro and"soothing"What the Uruguayan government hears and finally"acquits the Venezuelan dictatorship", in a recent article in the newspaper El País.

In reference to the attitude of the Uruguayan government, Schamis was decisive: "Despotism it always hurts, but when it is expressed in a melancholy way, it becomes a absurd pathology"