[VIDEO] Correa Hasn’t Clarified Why The SRI is Collecting, From Dole and Chiquita, Two Thousand Times Less Than Bananera Noboa



CORREA HASN’T CLARIFIED WHY THE SRI IS COLLECTING, FROM DOLE AND CHIQUITA, TWO THOUSAND TIMES LESS THAN BANANERA NOBOA

In an interview carried out by Veronica Landetta form Canal 1, Alvaro Noboa informed, that the owner of Dole corporation had a meeting with President Correa and the Yasuni Ambassador, Ivonne Baki.

Dole is one of the biggest banana exporter companies in the world and in Ecuador. “I ask Correa and Carlos Marx, why they are protecting Dole and haven’t submitted it to an audit like they did to Bananera Noboa? and why that company is only paying $ 700.000 of income tax, when the export amount was larger than Bananera Noboa’s, which is being charged with 98 million dollars?

If this number was real, which is not, Dole should have paid 120 million dollars of income tax for the year of 2005, said Noboa. What kind of arrangement this government has with Dole and Chiquita, which was charged, only, with $ 38.000? These questions, pointed out Noboa, the media should be asking to Correa and Carlos Marx.

“Bananera Noboa has paid all its taxes, until this year, and it doesn’t owe anything to the Treasury, I’m proud for paying all my taxes and that Bananera Noboa is part of the Noboa Corporation, which is among the 10 companies that pay more taxes in the country.” In this way, Noboa confirmed that he is the ecuadorian who pays most taxes, which contribute to health care, road construction and education; all in benefit of the poorest people in the country.

Noboa said that Carlos Marx, director of the SRI, has become a  small neighborhood leader who is trying to incentive people to get their support, like when he met with former employess of my companies to convince them to lie and denounce the non payment of their profit shares. “That is shameful, this things don’t happen in any other country.”

He expressed, once more, that there is no justice in Ecuador, all the powers of the State are controlled by Correa; if a judge doesn’t proceed as he see fits, he throw them in jail, like he did with Judge Posligua, for granting a precautionary measure to Bananera Noboa, which is a right established by the Constitution. “The SRI has lost competence, and with the exception lawsuit that Bananera Noboa has filed, the company will be able to defend itself and all the abuse and illegalities carried out by Carlos Marx, who acts on Correa’s orders to persecute me, will be known.

In an interview carried out by Veronica Landetta form Canal 1, Alvaro Noboa informed, that the owner of Dole corporation had a meeting with President Correa and the Yasuni Ambassador, Ivonne Baki.

Dole is one of the biggest banana exporter companies in the world and in Ecuador. “I ask Correa and Carlos Marx, why they are protecting Dole and haven’t submitted it to an audit like they did to Bananera Noboa? and why that company is only paying $ 700.000 of income tax, when the export amount was larger than Bananera Noboa’s, which is being charged with 98 million dollars?”

If this number was real, which is not, Dole should have paid 120 million dollars of income tax for the year of 2005, said Noboa. What kind of arrangement this government has with Dole and Chiquita, which was charged, only, with $ 38.000? These questions, pointed out Noboa, the media should be asking to Correa and Carlos Marx.

“Bananera Noboa has paid all its taxes, until this year, and it doesn’t owe anything to the Treasury, I’m proud for paying all my taxes and that Bananera Noboa is part of the Noboa Corporation, which is among the 10 companies that pay more taxes in the country.” In this way, Noboa confirmed that he is the ecuadorian who pays most taxes, which contribute to health care, road construction and education; all in benefit of the poorest people in the country.

Noboa said that Carlos Marx, director of the SRI, has become a  small neighborhood leader who is trying to incentive people to get their support, like when he met with former employess of my companies to convince them to lie and denounce the non payment of their profit shares. “That is shameful, this things don’t happen in any other country.”

He expressed, once more, that there is no justice in Ecuador, all the powers of the State are controlled by Correa; if a judge doesn’t proceed as he see fits, he throw them in jail, like he did with Judge Posligua, for granting a precautionary measure to Bananera Noboa, which is a right established by the Constitution. “The SRI has lost competence, and with the exception lawsuit that Bananera Noboa has filed, the company will be able to defend itself and all the abuse and illegalities carried out by Carlos Marx, who acts on Correa’s orders to persecute me, will be known.”

 

TRANSCRIPCIÓN TEXTUAL

 Verónica Landetta: Hello, welcome, we are with attorney Álvaro Noboa Pontón with whom we are going to discuss the conflict regarding the payment of taxes between Bananera Noboa and the Internal Revenue Service going on for the last two and a half years. Counselor, how are you? It’s a pleasure to welcome you, how are you?

Álvaro Noboa:  I’m very well, very optimistic. With regard to my electoral campaign, the PRIAN, with the greatest number of affiliates in the country, has been rated number one, together with Alianza País, and they are the two institutions with the largest number of members in the country. Which makes me Economist Correa’s number one challenger, who, according to the polls has a favorable rating of 36%, Álvaro Noboa has 21%, Guillermo Lasso, 3%, Lucio Gutiérrez, 2% and Alberto Acosta, 2%.

Verónica Landetta:  In a minute we’ll talk about that issue which is very important, especially for those who are watching the elections 2013 very closely.

Let’s move to the topic of the company, Bananera Noboa. The question that everybody asks.  Why speak about the place in which you find yourself now and of not having confronted the Internal Revenue Service in Ecuador, when on past September 29, as we can see in the news in the press,  charges for payment in the value of $98 million dollars were submitted to the agricultural companies related to the Bananera Noboa, and which ended in the seizing of vehicles and a boat?

Álvaro Noboa:  There’s been no confiscation of any good; there has been a seizure, which is a precautionary measure, or that is to say, here, we are going to have this until some point when a judge declares who is right, either Bananera Noboa or the IRS,  and I have asked Economist Correa openly – because it is well known that Economist Correa has a huge influence over the courts – that he allow us to litigate. I don’t understand why they have not only taken this measure, but also, in contrary to the Constitution, number 14, Article 66, that states, quite literally, “A prohibition against leaving the country can only be ordered by a competent judge.” Economist Carlos Marx Carrasco ordered a prohibition against my leaving the country, but I am going to return to the country; I have to return to the country; I have to register myself for the elections.

I travel every few months and the only reason that I am here at this moment is because of international interviews with the press. I just had one a little while ago with CNN, I am in contact with the international media, and I am also speaking to Presidents from around the world, denouncing the political persecution before my inscription to see if they can scare me away from registering, or they will try to invent something via the National Electoral Council, some kind of prohibition, and with PRIAN the most important party apart from Alianza País, then Economist Correa will not have to face a major contender, or what would be the fulfillment of his dream to run against himself, Correa against Correa.

Verónica Landetta:  Counselor Noboa, where were you on the day that that took place with the Internal Revenue Services.

Álvaro Noboa:  I was in the United States, but if you were to look at my passport, you will see that I am traveling all the time to Europe, to the United States, to Brazil, to Mexico.

My work as a businessman obliges me to travel to all parts of the world, every few months you will find I have left the country, and so at that moment it coincided with my being out of the country. But I have to return and I am going to return in the next few weeks for the issue of the election and will continue with the issue of the elections. Today, with the communications media having become revolutionaries the world over, I conduct radio interviews via Skype, I conduct interviews with Teleamazonas via the internet, with Twitter, with Facebook, and I maintain my electoral campaign as if I were in my office in Guayaquil, I’ve not changed at all in this.

Verónica Landetta:  Fine, your lawyers, or more precisely, the lawyers from the Grupo Noboa, on last October 3, lodged an appeal for an exception, and with that the IRS is deemed out of its realm of competence and the Bananera Noboa case moves to a court, or a judge, for it to be decided there. The question is:  What is the intention behind that appeal for an exception, is it to draw out the issue?

Álvaro Noboa:  The intention is to suspend the order of payment, but we have also presented other appeals, in not only the national courts, but also in the constitutional court in order for Economist Correa to finally authorize our right to litigate, because we have not been able to litigate. The IRS has still not brought a case against Bananera Noboa, it’s not been brought and what’s worse, is that, he presumes it finished. Economist Carlos Marx and Economist Correa are very badly advised in not having initiated the suit against us. We want to go before a judge to explain that Bananera Noboa has paid its taxes every year. In the case of Álvaro Noboa, I am the largest personal taxpayer.

Verónica Landetta:  How much do you pay?

Álvaro Noboa:  I declare something like $600,000 of personal income, and the Noboa group of companies is among the ten tax payers in the whole country. They pay millions of dollars and we pay it punctually, because we immediately have the government against us, they come and get involved, the people from the Business Superintendence com.  Or one could say, we pay everything we are obliged to by law and from that they make schools throughout the country, they build hospitals throughout the country.

I feel very proud of that because it is my obligation to pay those taxes and because, as an Ecuadorian, I want a greater number of hospitals every day, a greater number of streets, a greater number of works, thanks to those taxes.

Verónica Landetta:  Therefore, Álvaro Noboa and Grupo Noboa pay their taxes on time to the treasury.  What happened with Bananera Noboa?

Álvaro Noboa:  In 2005, Bananera Noboa paid its taxes; in 2005, Bananera Noboa paid its taxes; in 2007, Bananera Noboa paid its taxes.

Verónica Landetta:  And so where did what the Internal Revenue Service says come from?

Álvaro Noboa:  They didn’t accept our tax payment. On the other hand, they accepted a $600,000 tax payment from Dole, a $39,000 tax payment from Chiquita, and I have to say that Dole is a bigger exporter than Bananera Noboa, but we are an Ecuadorian company, which has raised the flag of Ecuador, thanks to my father’s efforts, and to my own efforts, because I am an employee, at that time I was an employee of the business, and today I am an employee of many business.

After Bananera Noboa paid its taxes they came and said it should pay two thousand times more than Chiquita:  $49,206,00  in taxes.

Verónica Landetta:  Economist Correa or Economist Carlos Marx Carrasco?

Álvaro Noboa:  It’s one and the same, Economist Correa or Economist Carlos Marx Carrasco. He says that we already owe $98,000,000. It’s Carlos Marx Carrasco’s work, but the order, as far as I see it, comes from Rafael Correa.

Verónica Landetta:  Three months ago you owed $98,000,000 and now there’s a report stating $133,000,000.

Álvaro Noboa:  I’ve heard Economist Correa speaking about $300,000,000 but without any kind of liquidation. That’s called prevaricating, and it’s something for the lawyer, and the lawyers therefore defend the company. I am not the legal representative of Bananera Noboa, neither am I a stockholder in Bananera Noboa.

When I began my political work, I gave up being a legal representative of Bananera Noboa and of all the companies belonging to Grupo Noboa, and since a very long time, since the time of my father, the stocks of all those companies are not in the hands of individuals. I am not the owner of those companies, they are in foundations, and in trusteeships of countries where the law prohibits the giving of information, without a judge coming from those countries, and so I am not a stockholder of Bananera Noboa, I’m not a general stock holder, I was not part of the procedures, I wasn’t included.

And so, in some magical way, they annulled the earlier order of payment, they didn’t put any kind of legal representative and out of mere supposition, Economist Carlos Marx Carrasco said that Álvaro Noboa was a stock holder, just like he could have said that you, Verónica, were a stockholder, because he had no document, he stated it out of a presumption and this should go, quite happily, to the Court and the Court will say that that presumption is wrong and that Álvaro Noboa is not a stockholder and that neither am I part of anything, and the only thing is that he has presumed that Álvaro Noboa is a stockholder and we are prohibiting him from leaving the country. That is what has happened, but I am going to return to the country, I am going to participate in the elections.

Verónica Landetta:  And you are not going to be able to leave, there is a prohibition against you leaving.

Álvaro Noboa:  I adore my country, and so I will stay in the country until a judge, in accord with what I told you earlier, has to go to the court and state, in accordance with Number 14, Article 66 of the Constitution, that only a judge is able to order a prohibition against departure, and so it will be a judge who decides.

Verónica Landetta:  Counselor, and this about going to the courts, isn’t that double prejudice, to hope that they say this is what is happening, this is what Bananera Noboa owes? I say a double prejudice because until a judge figures all this out, what’s going to happen with the debt and with what the Internal Revenue Service is charging?

Álvaro Noboa:  I am being sincere. I, as Álvaro Noboa, don’t have goods with that kind of value. I wouldn’t be able to pay a debt of that amount. So, I’ve got no other option than to go before a judge because, sincerely, it’s not like I have a checkbook on the side with a hundred and some million. Before giving them the pleasure of such a great injustice as that which I have been victim of, it forms part of political persecution, but the political persecution doesn’t stop there. Look at Judge Posligua. He’s in prison for administrating support in favor of Exportadora Bananera Noboa, and what is the message from Economist Correa to all Ecuadorians and judges?  It’s that I will take prisoner anyone who is in disagreement with me.

Verónica Landetta:  Now, what’s going to happen with the debt and with the demand by the Internal Revenue Service?

Álvaro Noboa:  Well, there are judges, like Judge Posligua who, seeing that Bananera Noboa is in the right –  beyond the fear is everything he has learned in his life, an beyond the fear is his professional ethics.  So that in those moments, he behaved in accordance with the law as judges say.

Verónica Landetta:  Is there a middle ground between Bananera Noboa and the Internal Revenue Service?

Álvaro Noboa:  That instead of my check being ninety-nine million it’s forty-something million dollars? I don’t have that check. I don’t have that kind of money. Here is my wallet if you would like to see, so that you can see here that I don’t have any check for forty-something million dollars.  Exportadora Bananera Nobao has to assume that payment, and it doesn’t have those kinds of sums either.

I want to know why such discrimination is happening. What does Economist Carlos Marx have with Chiquita. I am asking a very clear question. What does Economist Carlos Marx have with Chiquita?  I would like him to answer Ecuador why he is only charging them $39,000 dollars?

What does Economist Marx have with Dole? Why is he only charging them $600,000 dollars? Why hasn’t he submitted demands against those companies that are similar to our own? Because Economist Carlos Marx says that, “Oh, yes, yes, we are auditing them.” And what are the values of those demands? Are they $49,000,000? Dole exports more quantities than we export and it is public information that the owner of Dole visited Economist Correa two weeks ago in Quito. What does Economist Correa have to do with the president and owner of Dole that he allows him to pay $700,000 dollars?

But, what does he have against me that I have to pay $49,000,000? It’s important for Economist Correa to respond to the country about that.

Verónica Landetta:  Now, I’ve read that you, the Grupo Noboa, are referring to international instances to stop the taxes being charged. To what instances and with what goal in mind.

Álvaro Noboa:  Look, in light of the courts in Ecuador being completely intimidated by Economist Rafael Correa, then, they are only appealing to international courts in order to reveal the injustice. Dole would have to go there, Chiquita would also have to go to explain why they pay $39,000 while they want to charge Noboa $98,000,000.  And Mr. Murdock would have to go and explain as well his friendship with Ivonne Baki and with Economist Correa, that allows him to pay only $600,000, and what friendship exists between the heads of Chiquita and Economist Correa that lets them pay only $39,000.  This is an international scandal and it’s going to be very bad for those companies and for Economist Correa.

Verónica Landetta:  Why do you say President Correa, if the one who is managing the issue of the treasury is Carlos Marx Carrasco?

Álvaro Noboa:  I think you are sufficiently mature to recognize that Economist Correa has influence over the courts of Ecuador, so much so that Judge Posligua is in prison. That he has influence over the press in Ecuador, that there are journalists on the run with political asylum in other parts, and where today he is the owner of half the press of the Ecuadorian state. And it is known that Economist Correa is progressively controlling the Assembly, for good or for bad, and well, they say that the bribery runs riot in the Assembly and that in all the parties, the PRIAN, the Social Christian party, in Sociedad Patriótica, in all the parties there have been uniform changes with many of them in favor of Alianza País.

How does Economist Correa dare to speak of partidocracy and the old corrupt forms of government? How dare he with all that we are experiencing today in the country?

Verónica Landetta:  We’ve touched upon the political issue, the issue of the parties. What will happen with the PRIAN?  What will happen with your candidacy?  You tell me that you are going to return to Ecuador next week. You’ll return to the issue of the campaign?

Álvaro Noboa:  My campaign hasn’t stopped for even one second. We are at this moment holding interviews with Ecuadorian young people, with those young people 18 years and older who would like to be Assembly Members.  Because if half of the population is young, then half of the Assembly Members should be young. So we are finally giving way to the young so that they will become future leaders of the country and that they be part of this next Assembly to be elected in February 2013.

We are in radio campaigns and on the television, and every day we talk about our national proposal, which is the most important thing.  Economist Correa is trying to get the communication media to talk about Bananera Noboa and so I can’t have time to talk about my proposal.

My proposal is a very good one and it’s that all those Ecuadorians who earn $1 or $2 dollars a day in the country, or are getting the voucher, or are in absolute poverty, or have a part time job, and the majority of them vote for me, it’s for all those Ecuadorians to become middle class, just like you are, Verónica, thanks to having completed university studies, thanks to your having been trained in your area, thanks to your having been hired in businesses where you have worked and that your salary is higher than $1,000, or $3,000, or more.

What does the middle class need to live and to get a loan from a bank in order to by modern cement houses – and you are an example of an honorable and well-deserving person of the middle class who has all those chances, and I want all those chances for the Ecuadorian poor, and that they don’t allow the twenty companies in Ecuador of significant stature to do, like Cemento Nacional, the Cervecería, the Comisariatos, Nobis, Eluri, Grupo Banco del Pichincha, there’s not even twenty.

A thousand companies from overseas need to come and those companies, the first thing they need to do is training. And the cellular company comes, just to name one, Blackberry, here I have a Blackberry that today – I heard it from the President of Mexico – that half of the phone is manufactured in Mexico, and to invite Blackberry to let us manufacture telephones in Ecuador as well, to invite Samsung to let us manufacture electronic equipment in Ecuador. And what is goin got happen? Those people come and that many who is on the voucher gets training and he’s got his first  break and he’s become a specialized worker. Being a specialized worker he’s already started to earn between $800 and $1,000 dollars and he starts immediately with night school and at a university. The state promotes – not like now where it’s being selective and leaves thousands of students out, no – but rather it opens its doors to everyone, poor, rich or middle class young people, so that they study in those technical schools, in the universities and they prepare in order to rise economically, given that once they have a university degree, they’re going to Samsung, Blackberry Ecuador, Apple Ecuador, or whatever company comes to Ecuador.

Hopefully it won’t just be my friends, hopefully it won’t just be my friends who come. I know a lot of businessmen all over the world. That I would give them the conditions to come to Ecuador and so they would come and it will attract those people who are going to come with their university degree in hand and they’ll be able to say:  “Thanks for having given me a promotion as a trained worker and paid $800 or $1,000 dollars! I would like you to consider my degree and I will get more preparation and will become  a midlevel manager in this company, and become one of the middle class.” There he’s going to earn $3,000, or $2,000 dollars and via the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute, or via private banks, they will give him a loan for a house, they will give him a loan for cars, and at that moment, they’ve transformed themselves into the middle class.

Verónica Landetta:  Let’s talk again about all that to do with the $2 dollar voucher.

Álvaro Noboa:  At the moment they are earning $3,000 dollars, the voucher is no longer required. The voucher is for those who are unemployed. Look, no one who is employed earning $800, $1,000, $2,000 today qualifies for the voucher. It’s the unemployed and I will have to keep giving the voucher to the unemployed. But as they begin to work, they jump from $1 a day to $3,000 a month – I will keep giving it as long as he continues to be unemployed – but in the moment that he manages to place himself in that big company which is going to train him, which is going to push him, which  first is going to pay him $400, and later is going to pay him $800 because they’ve trained him, and later they are going to pay him $3,000 because he’s become middle management, he’s not going to be interested in the voucher because he’s become a middle manager and will no longer qualify for the voucher.

Verónica Landetta:  Then there will be other people who don’t have an income.

Álvaro Noboa:  No, my dream is that there will be no poor people in Ecuador and that there will be no one in that situation, just like there is no one in that situation in Chile, just like there is no on in that situation in South Korea, just like there is no on in that situation in Norway and everyone will be happy.  Thank you, Counselor Noboa for having helped me with the $2 dollar daily voucher and $60 dollars a month!

Thank you very much for having allowed me to earn $3,000 dollars, for having allowed me to become part of the middle class. Now I have a modern cement house, I have a car, I have a good job and I also have the capacity to educate my children as well.

Verónica Landetta:  Have you made contact with those foreign companies? There’s a file  already?

Álvaro Noboa:  Well, whenever I come across them they say, when you are President of Ecuador I’ll come to Ecuador. It’s not out of personal liking, because in business, it’s not about liking or personal interests, but about opportunities, it’s that they come to Ecuador because you know that you can transform Ecuador into a country like Chile, like South Korea, like the United States today, like Europe where the majority, where 95% of the countries, and 100% of the others are already middle class.

Verónica Landetta:  That is your central proposal.

Álvaro Noboa:  That is my central proposal.  Of course, the people are going to have to decide in February of next year. Let’s see, Ecuadorian people, do you want to transform yourselves into the middle class, to educate yourself, to get training, to have a job, to earn $2,000, $3,000 dollars a month, to have healthcare, education and safety for your children. To control, as well, inflation affecting prices through production, offer and demand.

If there is a large amount of rice production, a large amount of tomato production, the demand is maintained, and if it is maintained, yes, the man is earning a thousand times more and is living very well, because it’s not good if it goes too far down as that hurts the farmer.

The farmer. What are we going to do? We are going to offer great modernization programs for his agricultural plan, and we are going to give him credit, and we are going to give him good seeds and we are going to give him a watering system and we are going to give him fertilization systems.

I know how to do this because I have been able to do it in the companies where I work and therefore that is what makes production shoot upwards in all the agricultural areas. Today, the farmer is Correa’s worst enemy. Economist Correa doesn’t lack for enemies. Together with public employees, together with the police, together with the military, together with journalists, because they feel affected, together with all those people who he’s been laying off, together with the thousands of university students who have been left out and who can’t continue studying because they’ve made it so hard for them to get into university, together with the poor of Ecuador who he has failed completely, because he has kept them on a dollar a day instead of transforming them into a middle class.

In February 2013, Economist Correa is going to propose, “Ecuadorians, my proposal is that Ecuador becomes like Cuba, a country even poorer than Ecuador and that you will all be equally poor.”

Counselor Álvaro Noboa is going the other way, and I am going to propose:  middle class Ecuadorians with cement houses, with university or technical college degrees, with training, with jobs, with housing, and most importantly, with personal security. Ecuador has become a country with a high crime rate.

Verónica Landetta:  Exactly, we’re all with you on that one. At the beginning of the interview, you told me that your party has plenty of supporters.

Álvaro Noboa:  We’re in the fight.  It took Mandela nearly fifty years. He started in his twenties and became President at nearly 80, with a lot of those years spent in prison. Ghandi spent nearly half his life in prison and struggled for the independence of India. In the case of Mandela, he became President of South Africa, which is now a country in which the blacks have the same rights as the whites.

In my opinion it’s not bad that I can run all the times I can in order to achieve my objective, which is to eliminate poverty in Ecuador.

Verónica Landetta:  Your dream is to eliminate poverty, is that it?

Álvaro Noboa:  My dream is to eliminate poverty, yes. If you do it for me, I assure you, you’ll save me a huge task.

Verónica Landetta:  So you were saying there were how many supporters now who belong to the PRIAN?

Álvaro Noboa:  Well, I haven’t counted, 900,000 people signed up their support, but in order to save the National Electoral Council the work checking them, if the ID was poorly written, if some detail was badly written, and we nullified it, and so we sent the National Council 600,000 affiliations already sorted by us, they approved 200,000 of the 600,000.

We are, together with Alianza Pais, the political institution with the largest number of affiliates.  Besides that I wanted to give you the good news that through the New Humanity Crusade, under the direction of Anabella Azin, we are delivering free medical service, together with free medicine, to the poorest neighborhoods of Ecuador, we provide work via the micro-businesses, computers to schools, assistance for the handicapped.

Besides all that, we are continually presenting my message to the country via radio programs, television programs, from wherever I am. If I’m in Ecuador, I give them from Ecuador. If I’m abroad, then via Skype, or the telephone or via interviews in person, and that is my electoral campaign. Therefore, it continues, it hasn’t been interrupted, not for even a single day, because it’s a campaign for supporters. At this time, it’s not an electoral campaign, because no candidate has been registered yet. It’s a campaign for supporters that has allowed me get my proposal out to supporters.

Verónica Landetta:  You’re devoted to your work?  What’s happens to Álvaro Noboa?

Álvaro Noboa:  Álvaro Noboa can be a candidate because the only two impediments to being a candidate are:  first, being bankrupt, which, of course, I’m not; and second, having some kind of verdict executed against you, and I am not even part of the court case – I am telling you – the only thing that they did on the side and by sidestepping the Constitution, is that they’ve invoked a prohibition against me leaving the country. According to the Constitution, it’s only in a judge’s power to invoke such a prohibition, and so these are just other means of frightening me away, and the National Council says that they are going to change the regulations so that Correa runs against Correa.

In which case, they should already just say so to the Ecuadorians so that we know how things are going to be and I would imagine that he himself will put on the Presidential band and he himself will declare himself President, because no one else will run against him.

Verónica Landetta:  In any case, you haven’t stopped campaigning and adding people and making contact with the people from the PRIAN.

Álvaro Noboa:  We have directives in the 24 provinces throughout the country, for which reason the result is that we come out well in the polls. I can also give you the good news that since the year 1998, we’ve never had a PRIAN National Assembly like we had last week in Guayaquil.  12,000 people attended. That, for me, was one of the greatest achievements. As a leader I felt completely realized, and – more importantly – I felt that, yes, the people of Ecuador  want change.

In most of the elections I won, just like the whole world knows that I won the elections in ’98, or if I lost them, then I lost them with 45% of the vote, because the people believe in my proposals, because there are millions of Ecuadorians who live like the middle classes in the United States, in Spain, in Italy and who say to their families, come on over here all of you if you want to have that kind of life, the middle wealthy class is a different kind of life. That’s what I want for all Ecuadorians.

Verónica Landetta:  Then perhaps all those Ecuadorians living all over the world will return, but not like before where, for example, with the crisis in Spain, they have begun to require all Ecuadorians to return to Ecuador.

Álvaro Noboa:  And I will receive them with open arms, together with the thousand businessmen who will come and who will provide work for them.

Verónica Landetta:  In any case, what are you going to do in these days?

Álvaro Noboa:  These days, I will carry on my electoral campaign from wherever I am and as soon as I return to the country next week, I will continue. I will register as a candidate and from then, on with the fight that, as I told you, I have no shame in admitting it, I ask God to allow me to live for 150 years and I tell you that at this very moment, I feel like 30, I’m in good shape, I have an 11 year old son, I have four children in total, my wife Anabella is a spectacular woman in her own right, she’s been elected to the Assembly three times. Then there’s Daniel Noboa, who is already a businessman and is already 24 years old. There’s Carla Noboa who has already graduated, at 21, from the University of Portland in New York and who is in Paris improving her French so that she will speak three languages – Spanish, English and French. There’s Juan Sebastian, who, since I have a lot of agricultural businesses, is learning agricultural business management. He’s at the spectacular university of UC Davis, in Sacramento, the capital of California. We all think Los Angeles is the capital of California; it’s Sacramento. And my son, Santiago, of the four who have all been great students, but Santiago hasn’t graduated yet. They have graduated with the best grades and Daniel was the best student in his graduating year, in his class, and they speak three languages.

I have been blessed with my family. I have been blessed with my health. I have been blessed in the economic realm and with the love for Ecuadorians, how better to give God a return on those blessings than by transforming the poor of Ecuador into middle classes?

Verónica Landetta:  Aside from all the emotional aspect with your family, is everything all right?

Álvaro Noboa:  Everything’s fine and the emotional aspect with Ecuador is all right, too.

Verónica Landetta:  Well, we thank Counselor Álvaro Noboa Pontón for having received us, for having held this dialogue, for having these endless number of topics apart from the Internal Revenue Services, like the topic of the party’s politics and your expectations. Thank you for having received us. I hope it goes well for you and we hope to see you next week.

Álvaro Noboa:  That’s right. Thank you very much, thank you to all the television viewers and God bless Ecuador. Forward, Ecuador, Forward! I know how to do it! We are going to win!