María Nela Prada, Minister of the Presidency of Bolivia, position corresponding to the Chief of Staff, again criticized Jair Bolsonaro for offering political asylum to former coup president Jeanine Áñez. “Whatever is possible, I will do to get her to come to Brazil if the Bolivian government agrees. We are ready to receive her asylum, like those other two who were sentenced to ten years in prison,” Bolsonaro said during a live on Sunday. (26).
Speaking to the local press on Sunday (3), Prada said he does not accept foreign interference in Bolivian national policy.
“As a government of the people, we will not accept the interference of the Brazilian president in sovereign decisions that correspond to Bolivian justice. defended.
On June 10, former senator Jeanine Áñez was sentenced to ten years in prison for proclaiming herself president, violating the Constitution, which determined a hierarchical order for the rite of succession through the legislature. Since March 2021, the former president has been in preventive detention for the “Coup d’Etat I” case.
Prior to her arrest, Jeanine Áñez reportedly planned to flee to Brazil on a private jet to evade Bolivian justice.
Áñez was interim president of Bolivia between November 2019 and October 2020, assuming power after the resignation of Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera, driven by pressure from the Armed Forces and right-wing armed militias, in an episode recognized as a coup d’état. .
Other former military officials in the interim management were also convicted of breach of duty. There are complaints from the Bolivian Public Ministry that the former Defense Minister of the coup administration, Fernando López, was on the run in Brazil. The Brazilian authorities do not confirm the complaint.
Former government minister, Arturo Murillo, would also have passed through Brazilian territory until arriving in the United States, where he was arrested for money laundering.
economic interests
Minister María Nela Prada also commented that Bolsonaro’s support for Áñez reveals more than political sympathy, as there would also be economic interests involved.
“Why do these people defend each other? It’s not a matter of undemocratic political coincidence, there are economic interests behind it. A nefarious contract signed by YPFB [estatal boliviana] and Petrobras during the coup government. The term of the eighth amendment, signed on March 6, 2020, has just ended”, declared.
In April of this year, Bolivia reduced its gas supply to Brazil by 30%, preferring to export to Argentina, which now receives 14 million m³ of gas per day from the neighboring country. “This is not a socialist plot, it is a matter of commercial opportunity,” declared Bolivian Minister of Energy and Hydrocarbons, Franklin Molina.
The price paid by the Argentines for the extra gas quota was US$ 20 per million BTU — compared to the approximately US$ 7 per million BTU paid by Brazil.
Currently, Petrobras and the Bolivian state company YPFB (Bolivian Fiscal Oil Fields) live a controversy over a contract signed during the administration of former coup president Jeanine Áñez. As opposed to a previous contract, the agreement signed in 2020 called for YPFB to pay for transporting gas to Brazil on the Bolivian side of the Gasbol pipeline, generating an additional cost of around US$70 million per year to the Bolivian public coffers. Due to the differences between the two state-owned companies, today Brazil receives only 4 million m³ per day, about 10 million m³ less than what was contracted.
Editing: Arturo Hartmann
