The former president of Uruguay JOsé Pepe Mujica criticized the conservative government of his country, admitting that he does not “like a damn” the decision of President Luis Lacalle Pou to facilitate that foreigners with high purchasing power can have a fiscal residence in that country to evade taxes in their place of origin.
Mujica considered that this measure It “endangers” Uruguay’s relationship with Argentina and would imply a reversal in the effort of the eastern republic to stop being “a tax haven”.
“We enter a dialectic that we have already lived in this country and that I do not like the hell, at all. The relationship with Argentina is the first chapter of Uruguay’s foreign policy, ”said the former president during an interview on Metro radio.
“Argentina has a long experience in withdrawing dollars abroad”
The measure in question is the one that President Luis Lacalle Pou made effective yesterday and that enables Argentines and any foreigner with high purchasing power to buy a home there and establish a fiscal domicile.
For Mujica, these types of measures correspond to a time when “Uruguay had a rather opaque financial system that it functioned as an intermediary link to Argentine financial interests that were dedicated to obtaining (escaping) money “, and that the Broad Front tried to retrace its steps during its government years.
“Argentina has a long experience in taking dollars abroad” and “that has been used by speculative interests that used the conditions of Uruguay to make capital flee”he recognized.
For this reason, The new measure taken by Lacalle Pou corresponds with “an attitude that surely is not sympathetic to Argentine interests.” “It may seem like a good short-term solution to some, but for me it puts in danger something very important that is the stability of a very important relationship for Uruguay ”.
The former Uruguayan president denied having discussed this issue with the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, and acknowledged the problems that this could cause: “The bad relations with Argentina at the time of (Juan Domingo) Perón determined that in five or six years Perón closed the tap and that not even the parrot came to Uruguay, “he said.
Coronavirus in Uruguay
During the Interview, the leader evaluated the effects of the coronavirus in his country. He maintained that one of the reasons why Uruguay has few cases is because “it is a country with a small population” and with “a strong presence of public services” that during the successive governments of the Broad Front “were not abandoned but improved”.
However, he noted that “the enemy is crouching, especially on the border as if waiting for the opportunity to make a prank,” and noted that the danger is on the border with Brazil, the country most affected by the pandemic in Latin America. “We have had a presence of infections in Rivera and Treinta y Tres. It is not by chance, they are border departments closely linked to the life of Brazil ”he pointed out.
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