Uruguayan Minister appears before Parliament over purchase of aircraft from Spain

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uruguay’s Minister of National Defense, Javier Garcia, is being questioned Thursday (29) by the opposition in the Parliament over the purchase of two Hercules aircraft from Spain at the end of 2020.

Garcia’s appearance began at around 10.15 local time (13.15 GMT) on Thursday and is expected to last several hours.

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The Frente Amplio (FA), a leftist coalition that governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020 and is now in the national opposition, understand that this acquisition was a “bad purchase” of airplanes that “are retired”, which is why it requested this appearance.

A few days ago, FA deputy Gerardo Núñez – who is in charge of the interpellation – told Efe that since the purchase was made, he has followed this matter and requested several reports from the Ministry of National Defense (MDN) and the Court of Auditors.

“In all this time we have been able to confirm that this is a bad purchase, of aircraft that are retired, as the Spanish press itself had said when it reported that the Spanish government was no longer using them, and it is taking place at a very particular moment in our country of significant economic cuts”, emphasized the deputy.

Núñez understands that there were “certain warnings” from the legal department of the Uruguayan Air Force and the MDN that warned about the purchase due to “the lack of guarantees” provided by the Spanish government.

In this sense, he underlined that although four aircraft offers were presented, the deal with the Spanish government was closed before knowing two of these proposals.

He also recalled that when the planes were scheduled to arrive in Uruguay, one could not do so because it had a technical problem that had to be solved in Brazil.

The Uruguayan government announced in September 2020 the purchase of the two aircraft from the Spanish Air Force for about US$22 million and in December reported the arrival of the aircraft, assuring that it was a purchase made “after an extensive professional study by the Air Force”.