Russian Spies Allegedly Got Fake Passports From Uruguay President’s Bodyguards

When Luis Lacalle Pou, the president of Uruguay, returned from a trip to Costa Rica with his family and security detail, he received a message that he needed to meet immediately with the country’s intelligence boss in strict secrecy. He couldn’t tell anyone, especially his own bodyguards.

He arrived at the presidential residence and met with Claudio Correa, the director of intelligence, who had startling news: Uruguayan authorities were about to arrest the president’s chief of personal security, Alejandro Astesiano, for a plot that allegedly facilitated fake Uruguayan passports for potential Russian spies.

Soon after they spoke, Astesiano was arrested on September 26 at the president’s family residence.

“If you were surprised by the news, imagine myself,” Lacalle Pou said in a press conference the day after the arrest. “I was just traveling with my children and the person who was arrested yesterday.”

Lacalle Pou denied being involved in the scandal and having any knowledge of Astesiano’s alleged involvement in the scheme.

“He takes care of me and my family. I do not give the most precious thing that I have, which is my family, to a person who I suspect is acting outside the law,” said the president.

Details of the allegations remained murky for weeks beyond that Astesiano allegedly provided fake birth certificates that said Russian citizens had Uruguayan parents, which were used to obtain passports. But on Tuesday, Uruguayan newspaper El Observador published parts of a hearing in the case where investigator Gabriela Fossati said that one of the principal lines of investigation was that the passports were to be used “with the intention to obtain visas to the United States or to move freely in Europe.”

“We are talking about Russian people linked to intelligence powers of the Russian country, before and now,” Fossati reportedly said in recordings from the hearing obtained by El Observador. She did not provide further proof of that allegation. Fossati also said that some may have been from Russian citizens fleeing the war and attempting to start a new life, but that couldn’t explain all the cases, especially the earlier ones.

The plot reportedly began as early as 2013, and potentially before. Authorities allege that Astesiano worked with a Uruguayan couple, and two Russian nationals, who were also arrested. 

Álvaro Fernández, a public notary, allegedly located Uruguayans, many deceased, who they’d use as the supposed relatives to obtain citizenship. His partner, Patricia Medina, reportedly played an organizational role in the scheme. Russian citizens Alexey Silivaev and his wife, who has not been named, allegedly located the potential clients, who paid a fee for the passports. Astesiano reportedly even held meetings with some of his co-conspirators in the official workplace of the president and his administration, known as the Executive Tower.

While Uruguayan authorities have officially detected 20 Russian citizens with Uruguayan passports so far, Fossati told El Pais newspaper that there currently existed “hundreds, or thousands maybe of falsified Uruguayan documents.”

In 2021, Uruguay faced another passport scandal during Lacalle Pou’s time in office when perhaps the country's most notorious alleged drug trafficker, Sebastián Marset, was detained in Dubai while traveling with a forged passport from the nearby South American country of Paraguay. Marset reportedly received a new Uruguayan passport quickly after contacting people back home, and was released, then disappeared. Marset is currently wanted by Interpol and remains on the lam.

Lacalle Pou distanced himself from Astesiano and downplayed their relationship, even though he’d known him for roughly 20 years and just returned from a trip to Costa Rica with him. The president claimed that he had no idea that Astesiano was involved in any sort of crime.

But soon after the passport allegations emerged, numerous outlets published documents showing Astesiano was investigated over 20 times in the past two decades, with multiple cases related to fraud. Local Uruguayan outlet Radio Sarandi had brought many of the allegations to light over a year prior when it published a detailed investigation in September 2021 about alleged crimes by various members of the president’s security detail, and specifically detailed many of the investigations that targeted Astesiano over the years.

Still, the government of Lacalle Pou has attempted to deflect blame. During a recent senate hearing, Interior Minister Luis Alberto Heber pointed out that the scheme began during the administration of former president José Mujica. He also alleged that both Mujica and another former president, Tabaré Vázquez, employed people on their security details who had previous court cases.