The mysterious Argentine woman at the center of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's cheating scandal has officially confessed to her relationship with him.
Maria Belen Chapur, 41, sent a statement to Buenos Aires news network C5n.
In it, she admits she and the married Mark Sanford, 48, have a relationship.
Maria Belen Chapur says she refuses to speak on her private life in greater detail and that the 200-word statement is all she plans on saying about it.
Yesterday, we reported how Mark's estranged wife, Jenny Sanford, was aware of Mark's affair with Maria and asked the Governor to dump his mistress.
This was before he went AWOL last week and embarked on his not-so-secret journey to South America to see her, which ultimately exposed the affair.
After telling his staff he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, Sanford went off the grid and traveled to Argentina. The State newspaper in South Carolina accosted him at the Atlanta airport upon his return, after which he admitted his affair.
Follow the jump for the official statement of Maria Belen Chapur, in which she addresses the affair as well as Sanford's emails to her that were leaked ...
I have decided to send to you this release that will be the only one, to thus clarify certain incorrect things that are being spread worldwide so as to give an end to the subject that as you can imagine is of great pain to me, as for my two children, my family and all the great friends that I have known and harvested throughout my life and that had always been there for me.
1. I won't speak about my private life as it just belongs to me. It has already been made too public during these last days, bringing to me even more pain.
2. I categorically deny that the individual who hacked my Hotmail account was the one friend with whom I shared days in Brazil in the Rolex Regatta. This friend, as you could all well read in my recently published e-mails, is an excellent, respectable and honorable man incapable of making anything similar to that. Far away from being the author of this evil action he was instead another victim. In December 2008, the stolen e-mails were sent by the hacker to him as well as to the newspaper The State.
3. My hotmail account was hacked around November 24th, through an old e-mail account under my name provided by an Argentine company. I made my denouncement at that time at the Argentine company, where my old account was still opened, as did the denouncement at hotmail. I was finally able to close down that old account and to recover by December 8th, my hacked hotmail account, after answering a long questionnaire sent by Microsoft. All this is registered in Microsoft as well as in the Argentine company. I kept all my requests and the answers given by Microsoft at that time, company that with great speed and effectiveness solved my problem making possible the recovery of my hotmail. Also the Argentine company, via a telephone call, decided to immediately close down that account as an exception, due to the gravity of my denouncement , despite not belonging this account to my home address.
4. Finally, I do have a firm suspicion of whom particularly may have done this great damage directed specially to me, but at the same time destroying the life of so many others. Not counting on the sufficient proves and living according to the rule of law, I am myself forced to maintain the individual's name in anonymity. I am not the one to judge anyone, I leave this in God's hands.
- Maria Belen Chapur
