The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ecuador will investigate the veracity of a recently publicized WikiLeaks cable that claims Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa received campaign funding from the FARC and Venezuela, El Espectador reported Friday.
According to a WikiLeaks cable dated January 21, 2010, Ricardo Patiño, the political director for President Correa’s 2006 campaign and the current foreign minister, sought and received campaign funds from the FARC and the Venezuelan government.
The document, signed by Andrew Chritton, the then-number two at Quito’s U.S. embassy, describes the sources linking campaign funding from the Venezuelan government as “highly credible,” while admitting that reports of FARC funding for the president were at that time “uncorroborated.”
Patiño stated in a press conference that the information revealed in the cable is “absolutely false” and accused the media of attempting to vilify him and discredit the president in order to influence the upcoming Ecuadorian referendum on May 7.
Correa, meanwhile, has consistently rejected any alleged connections to the FARC, although the now-dead former rebel commander Victor Julio Suarez, alias “Mono Jojoy,” admitted to funding Correa’s campaign when reading the deathbed manifesto of stricken founding leader Manuel “Tirofijo” Marulanda in 2009.
It is nevertheless unclear whether Correa ever knew of the sources of his campaign funds.