The Uruguayan economy minister resigned on Saturday in the face of allegations he took part in the irregular sale of government airplanes during the closure of the country’s flagship carrier, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said.
Mujica defended the conduct of Fernando Lorenzo, his minister since March 2010, as local television broadcast images of the economist entering a courthouse on Saturday morning.
“He has been a brilliant minister,” Mujica told reporters. “We have no doubt about his ethical integrity.”
Lorenzo was widely respected by investors, but faced growing criticism after the government sold seven airplanes that once belonged to Pluna, the airline the state took over and shuttered in the wake of its bankruptcy last year.
Pluna was previously 75 percent controlled by the Leadgate financial group, with the government owning the rest.
The state has yet to receive anything in payment for the planes — bought in October last year by businessman Hernan Calvo, who used a different name when bidding on them.
Calvo is linked to an influential Argentine businessman who controls several big businesses in Uruguay, including BQB, an airline that once competed with Pluna.
The attorney general’s office suspects Lorenzo of using his position to speed up the US$137 million deal, which his ministry was not charged with overseeing.
Lorenzo has said he did nothing wrong and is appealing the attorney general’s request to move the investigation to trial.
“I am at peace with the decisions I made,” he was quoted by the Web site El Observador as saying after leaving court on Saturday.
Uruguay’s state bank president Fernando Calloia was also summoned to provide statements to investigators on Saturday about a US$13.6 million guarantee the bank made for the purchase of the planes.
Mujica is considering replacing Lorenzo with the current president of Uruguay’s central bank, Mario Bergara, who would in turn be replaced by Jorge Polgar, a former president of the bank Hipotecario, a source in the president’s political party, Broad Front, told reporters.
Uruguayan Interior Minister Eduardo Bonomi will temporarily head the economy ministry until a new minister is sworn in.
Lorenzo’s departure from government will allow him to make statements about the scandal that he might not be able to make as minister, a source with the Broad Front party told reporters.
Mujica vowed to adhere to any judicial rulings.
“We will respect the decisions of the court entirely, as is natural in a law-abiding society,” he said.
A source in the economy ministry said that Mujica did not ask Lorenzo to resign.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts