Guillermo Lasso revealed the names of 5 assembly members who asked the government for money in exchange for voting on a law

The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, revealed the names of five legislators and an adviser to the National Assembly who had requested “economic benefits”, in exchange for voting in favor of the investment law proposed by the Executive and which was not approved due to lack of votes. With this revelation, Lasso assured that he fulfills his “moral, political and legal obligation to bring the corruption of the National Assembly to the attention”.

In a letter sent to the Attorney General, Lasso indicates that legislators Rosa Cerda, Gisella Molina, Edgar Quezada, Celestino Chumpi and Cristian Yucailla, and the latter's adviser, Marcelo Rosero, called for “economic benefits for themselves in exchange for recording their I am voting in favor of the above - mentioned bill”. The legislators arrived at the congress under the cover of the indigenous party Pachakutik and belong to the congress bench. For the Ecuadorian president, what was requested by the assembly members “is extremely serious”, as he detailed in the letter sent from Carondelet, the seat of government.

Last Thursday, Lasso posted on his social networks that the investment bill did not win the 70 votes to pass because the Executive did not accept the blackmail of the legislators. Although he did not name names, the president explained that some congressmen asked for positions, “hospitals, electricity companies, ministries” and other cash.

“It is the height of the heights of those assembly members who have come to ask for cash from the Government. We cannot allow the corruption of tax evaders, who want to change their vote because we don't charge them taxes. In this country you have to tell the truth: some for public office and others for money, and others for tax evasion,” Lasso said with a stern tone in a video that was broadcast on his official accounts.

Given what the president said in that video, several politicians and opinion actors demanded the disclosure of the names of the legislators whom Lasso accused of blackmail in exchange for votes.

Likewise, hours before the vote on the law, last Thursday, President Guillermo Lasso denounced that the former presidential candidate for the Democratic Left, Xavier Hervas, asked that he not be taxed so that his party's bench votes in favor of the law: “There are politicians who just want to talk to the president and ask 'get rid of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), not to charge me'. That is corruption, and I am not here to defend any particular interest of anyone.”

President Lasso publicly gave the name Hervas and questioned his status as an entrepreneur: “He says he is an entrepreneur, and I don't believe that: he is either an entrepreneur or he evades taxes”. Hervas and the ID bench have denied Lasso's accusations and even warned that there may be judicial consequences for the president's statements.

This weekend, Lasso also asked the Internal Revenue Service (SRI) to investigate tax returns made by the former presidential candidate of the Democratic Left. In the letter to Marisol Andrade, director of the SRI, Lasso provides “formal and express instructions for thorough investigation of Hervas' tax returns. In his letter, Lasso assured that “this matter cannot be limited to the political, we must advance in the legal sphere, so I must note the following public information regarding citizen Xavier Hervas in order to be considered in the audit processes that have been initiated or initiated”.

In response to the president's complaints, Hervas also published a video to tell his version of the talks around the investment law. The former presidential candidate said that Lasso contacted him and “he told me that he needs ID support for the investment law, to which I replied that I do not vote, because I am not an assemblyman nor do I own the votes of others, that our party is justly democratic and with that we say goodbye to the president. I have never asked him for anything, not after I supported him in the second round, nor worse now and I never will, that is not in my nature,” he said.

Hervas said that Lasso's statements surprised him and that he is in pain: “I hope that they never go through what I am going through now, that they will never be attacked by someone who goes to their house and worse the president of the Republic who has the power that he has is left defenseless.” The former candidate has spoken of initiating legal action.

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