Latin America
Related: About this forumAlleged king of contraband favourite for Paraguay’s presidency
Alleged king of contraband favourite for Paraguays presidency
Horacio Cartes laughs off the suggestion that he is involved in drug trafficking and cigarette smuggling
Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 06:00
First published:Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 06:00
Five years ago today Paraguay was a country striding towards a better future.
On April 20th, 2008, voters elected former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo as president, bringing to an end six decades of increasingly mafia-style rule by the populist Colorado party with promises to clean up public life and redistribute wealth in a desperately unequal society. But the new dawn turned out to be a false one. Lugo was impeached last June after four wasted years in power and now the man favourite to win tomorrows presidential election is a shady Colorado businessman whom foreign governments believe is involved in drug trafficking and cigarette smuggling.
Horacio Cartes laughs off the suggestion that he is a narco. But during the campaign he has ducked talking to foreign reporters least they question him about US diplomatic cables which discuss Drug Enforcement Agency investigations that identify him as heading up an organisation believed to launder large quantities of United States currency generated through illegal means, including through the sale of narcotics. And while Washington clearly believes Cartes is involved in Paraguays booming drug trade the Brazilians have identified him as a key player in the countrys cigarette smuggling rackets.
Paraguays outsized cigarette industry is built for contraband. Local factories produce 20 times more than domestic demand and legitimate exports do not explain the surplus, most of which is exported illegally around the world in 2006 gardaí seized five million cigarettes hidden in a container that originated in Paraguay.
The main destination for such contraband is Brazil where a 2004 congressional investigation identified a firm owned by Cartes (himself a smoker) as a major offender in flooding the country with illegal cigarettes.
More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/alleged-king-of-contraband-favourite-for-paraguay-s-presidency-1.1366538
ocpagu
(1,954 posts)Cartes own, at least, 26 companies, most of them of cigarettes (including Tabesa, owner of the brand Eight, one of the champions of smuggling in Brazil). Besides smuggling and drug trafficking there are strong evidences that he also runs a powerful network of money laundering. He's also the favorite of the "brasiguaios" (community of Brazilian landowners/oligarchs living in Paraguay, with ~ 400,000 people) - foreigners occupying Paraguayan land and opposing the Paraguayan working class' demands for... land reform! That's rich, isn't it?
Let's hope that the left wing in Paraguay can organize to win the next elections.
Catherina
(35,568 posts)In a recent radio interview, Cartes also said support of same-sex marriage is like believing in the end of the world, reported The New York Times.
Mr. Cartes, 57, theatrically threatened to inflict harm on his own private parts if his 28-year-old son were to seek to marry another man.
I would shoot myself in the testicles, because I do not agree, he said, using slightly more colorful language to describe how he would react to such a possibility.
...
The comments come as Cartes has also been hit with charges of money laundering and smuggling contraband Paraguayan-made cigarettes into neighboring Brazil.
While he still maintains a lead in the polls, recent data shows Cartes numbers slipping in advance of Sundays vote. He has no issued an apology for his anti-gay remarks.
http://sdgln.com/news/2013/04/19/paraguay-politico-would-shoot-himself-balls-if-his-son-married-man
What a farce. They think they're going to get back into Mercosur and UNASUR too after they got kicked out for the coup against Lugo. Check out their attitude:
http://en.mercopress.com/2013/04/18/democracy-in-paraguay-is-here-to-stay-mercosur-and-unasur-have-become-irrelevant
Check again idiots. No sooner had they said that than both UNASUR and Mercosur responded not to bet on it.
They've got real little shits in charge who went even further than the US, stating that "Maduro is persona non grata".
I hope the people of Paraguay repudiate both rightwing parties at the polls but I'm not holding my breath on this one.
ocpagu
(1,954 posts)... to accept the idea that the right-wing is the only political force entitled to run the country.
It would even be funny (if not tragic) the way they kept hysterically saying that Lugo was a Bolivarian caudillo bringing Stalinism to Paraguay every time he tried to present a project of social reform.
They live in their own reality, frozen in the 60s, still buying the bullshit about evil communists taking over Latin America. A Paraguayan newspaper published an editorial attacking the Brazilian government and the foreign minister Antonio Patriota, calling him of "intellectual scoundrel" because he recognized the election of Maduro.
http://br.noticias.yahoo.com/jornal-paraguaio-chama-patriota-canalha-intelectual-190851681.html