Uruguay foreign minister under pressure to quit over 'romantic' travel to Rome

 ROME – Uruguayan Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin’s mysterious expenses claims costing the taxpayer some dlrs 100,000, including as many as 30 visits to Rome over the past year, can be explained by the need for him to enjoy the company of his mistress working at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the Eternal City, FAO sources say.

 Lubetkin, formerly head of the Latin American division of the FAO based in Chile before his murky and increasingly unpopular appointment as foreign minister, has bewildered citizens in his homeland by claiming nearly dlrs 100,000 in per diem allowances of some dlrs 600 a day for his odyssey of travel around the world, mainly to Rome where he was based for decades. Political commentators have been puzzled why he has evidently produced no hotel receipts to justify the expenses, a mystery that FAO sources says is because he stays with his long term mistress, a senior FAO executive, at her apartment, which itself is paid for by taxpayers via donations from member states.

 A seasoned observer of Uruguayan politics commented that “the scandal is that he has spent an inordinate number of days in Rome on a par diem of over dlrs 500 a day.”

 “He has no hotel receipts,. Who is hosting him? If he does not pay anything because he sleeps in the house of an ex staffer of his at FAO, keeping the money of the citizens, that is a blatant case of corruption.”  

 Lubetkin sued the Italian Insider 10 years ago in the Rome Tribunal together with then FAO director general Jose Graziano da Silva and three other FAO executives including Lubetkin’s friend Clara Velez Fraga, currently head of outreach at the troubled UN agency.

 Ms Fraga claimed that she had been libelled because the Insider said her promotion was thanks to a Hispanic clique at the agency. Lubetkin for his part objected to the Insider reporting that he had destroyed the IPS news agency where he was formerly editor in chief by moving it into the FAO building, meaning the agency no longer could report independently on the UN.

 An Italian judge convicted Insider editor John Phillips of criminal libel at the end of the trial and ordered him to pay some 85,000 euros in advance damages and legal costs though the punishment handed down for the alleged libel was a fine of just 1000 euros.

 Lubetkin’s refusal to clarify his expenses as well as his strongly pro-Israeli policies and cosying up to the Trump administration threatens to bring down the broad centre left coalition government in Uruguay. But many political pundits hope he may be forced to resign now that the true motive for his travel is clear, the sources added.

 Lubetkin has defended his constant travel to Rome on the grounds that all roads lead there and he wants to make friends with Pope Leo XIV.

 In all Lubetkin spent 160 days, more than 5 months, on official missions in the 12 months to June 2026.