The beverage unionist, who has just retired after 48 years, was active in the union together with a military spy
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In 2017 a case came to public light that Richard Read was never able to explain properly and to this day it remains a mystery.
Among the 1,444 microfilmed rolls that Azucena Berrutti, former Minister of Defense, found in 2006 in a cabinet in an old military intelligence headquarters, there is the curious case of a military spy infiltrated in the beverage workers union, both in the civic-military government and in democracy.
"Agent 03-E" leaked to the governments, between 1985 and 2004, the internal discussions in the Beverage Workers and Employees Federation (FOEB). The spy's purpose was to inform his superiors about the movements of the union members.
The transcription of those documents allowed union leader Richard Read to identify him when the matter became public in 2017.
Member of the Socialist Party
The intelligence agent not only joined the beverage workers union, but he also became connected with the Socialist Party in 1983, introduced by that party's banking union leader, Eduardo "Lalo" Fernández.
Fernández
Fernández himself confirmed the spy's story in 2017 and said that he was his friend, that he never distrusted him, and that when he found out about the story he called him but he did not answer.
It is surprising that the Aebu union leader did not realize that he was bringing a military spy into his party. Fernández was a long-standing political and union activist.
Until the second half of the '90s, the spy was active in the Socialist Party, and then he went to the city of Minas, where he continued his political career in the ranks of Frente Amplio.
The spy retired from the Ministry of Defense in 2005 (when the minister was the socialist Azucena Berruti) after 41 years of service, although it is only detailed that there were eight years of "simple military service" and 33 years of "civilian service," without specifying who the spy was.
He was Luis Becerra Aldama, alias "Leandro", who was Read's right-hand man in FOEB for almost 20 years. Through FOEB, spy Becerra joined the leadership of PIT-CNT, rubbing shoulders with the most important union leaders of the time, such as Juan Castillo and Fernando Pereira.
When he retired in 2005 he settled in Minas, where he continued to be active in Frente Amplio, and he joined the Lions Club in that town, of which he was president.
Did Read not know anything?
It is very strange that Richard Read did not know absolutely anything. He was active side by side with a military spy for almost 20 years, he shared countless conversations, lunches, dinners, meetings, and assemblies with him, and apparently he never found out anything.
When the matter became public in 2017, Read pretended to be surprised and said that "he found out from the press" that he had been active for many years alongside a military spy.
It is very striking that since 2017 Read has never referred to the subject again in the hundreds of interviews that he has given from that moment until today, January 2026.
