President Laso pleads not guilty and announces that he will defend himself in impeachment

Quito: Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has recorded a message to the nation asserting that the operation against him “smells bad” and only seeks to kill his reputation.

In a video broadcast on a national network and immediately uploaded to social networks, Laso is shown surrounded by his wife, María de Lourdes Elcivar, and a heterogeneous group of 50 people, with their country’s flag in the background.

In the speech, he accused the opposition of fabricating evidence against him “to seize power and weaken and destroy democracy.”

Laso’s message comes one day after the Constitutional Court decided to accept the impeachment request for alleged embezzlement, so that according to the law, within a maximum of two months, the president’s impeachment trial should officially begin.

In his message, Laso said, “I am a democrat, and I believe that democracy is strengthened by more democracy, so I respect the decision of the Constitutional Court, although I do not share it.”
In this sense, the Ecuadorian president affirmed that he was “innocent” and always acted with “correct intention”.

He added that his impeachment request was a “desperate, immortal and violent attempt to steal” stability from Ecuadorean citizens, and that it was his duty to defend his good name and family.

The Ecuadorian president is linked to the case called The Great Godfather after the disclosure of documents and recordings provided by a local media. According to the complaints, businessman Danilo Carrera, the president’s son-in-law, will be involved in an alleged network of selling positions and contracts in public sector companies and in alleged links with the Albanian mafia, which in 2021 contributed $1.5 million to the election campaign of today’s Ecuadorian president, who succeeded Lenin Moreno. in office.

But Laso insisted during his speech that he had nothing to do with this case.
“They allegedly accuse me of misusing public funds for my own benefit when I am not yet the President of the Republic, how is that possible? What should I do with the 2018 contract? There is not even an investigation in the Public Prosecutor’s Office on this issue,” the president said.

In the end, Laso concluded on an optimistic note, affirming that “this is a battle we will win because truth always wins.”