Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa denied Saturday that a Colombian guerrilla group donated money to his 2006 presidential campaign, asking his country’s civil commission to investigate the allegation.
Colombian media broadcast a 2008 video Friday in which guerrilla leader Víctor Julio Suarez Rojas, better known as Mono Jojoy, said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia donated money to Correa’s campaign. The guerrilla group, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, also has had conversations with Correa’s emissaries and has reached “some accords, according to documents that we have,” Suarez said in a videotape. Correa denied the allegations and said he wants the nation’s civil commission to see “if the Ecuadorian government, if the Alianza PAIS [political party] has received 20 cents from any foreign group, not just from the FARC.”
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The leftist president said that during the campaign, some opponents accused him of receiving money from leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, from drug cartels and from the FARC. “They just don’t know what else to say,” Correa said. “It is up to you to decide who to believe: the same people as usual or those who endanger their lives to save the country.”
