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MONTEVIDEO.- The president of the ruling National Party of Uruguay, Pablo Iturralde, resigned this Thursday after the leak of a chat exchange with a leader investigated for sexual crimes about the prosecutor who would take the case, who he defined as his friend.
Iturralde exchanged WhatsApp messages with former senator Gustavo Penadés, currently in preventive detention for a case of sexual abuse, about the investigation against him and about the prosecutor who would take his case, Alicia Ghione. Iturralde saw her with optimism to take the potatoes out of the fire and compared her favorably with the previous prosecutor, whom he defined in an insulting manner.
“By virtue of the disclosure of a private and personal conversation and in order not to compromise my colleagues, nor the institutional functioning of my party, I have made the decision to resign from my position as president of the Board of Directors of the National Party,” Iturralde first wrote in his X account.
The decision to resign was made after the weekly Search disclose that Iturralde told Penadés in March 2023 —when the complaint of sexual abuse had been made public—that the first prosecutor assigned to the case, Mariana Alfaro, was a “daughter of a bitch.” Alfaro’s replacement, on the other hand, was her friend.
Alfaro “was the one who requested the raid on Azul for rape issues and it is with Ocean issues. I shot him to death today and he shit. He understood the msg. The next one is Ghione. If there is a logic, they should give it to her. Ghione is my friend,” said the party president in the chat.
A day later what he expected happened and Ghione took the case. “They gave it to Alicia Ghione. Just called me. “He asked me for your number,” Iturralde wrote to Penadés on March 31. “It is completely trustworthy. Great guy,” she noted.
And he continued: “Gómez clearly understood the references to the Prosecutor’s Office in my statements. It’s a big shit and it tastes good that Alice is ours because I spoke a thousand times with Jorge Díaz, who had her immersed. You have to pressure it. You have to push him or he will shit and leave.”
After the chats leaked this Thursday and made a first ruling on X, Iturralde shared a longer text, an open letter, where despite the evidence he said that it was “absolutely” false that he had “some type of impact on the prosecutor’s assignment in the case of former senator Penadés.”
“The facts are eloquent regarding what the Justice Department acted in a professional and independent manner, denying any false accusation based on capricious interpretations disconnected from reality,” he noted.
He also pointed out that to clear up doubts he asked the Prosecutor’s Office “that an ex officio investigation be initiated with the objective of clarifying the facts.” And on a political level, he said that “given the political sensitivity of the matter” he decided to resign and thus “prioritize the interest of the country” and of the party “on any personal pretension.”
In the National Party there is an agreement about the person who will take Iturralde’s place. Party sources pointed out The country that the name that brings together the consensus of all sectors of the party is that of Macarena Rubio, current secretary of the Board of Directors.
The Country/GDA
THE NATION
