This year’s Miss Universe winner, Leila Lopes, could be stripped of her crown! Lopes is accused of fraud after allegedly falsifying application documents needed in order for her to compete. Lopes is also being investigated after rumors surfaced that her parents are from Cuba and not Angola like she claimed. Read more about the claim and her response to it after the jump.
@Julie1205
About a week after being crowned Miss Universe 2011, Miss Angola Leila Lopes found herself caught up in fraud allegations that threatened to end her reign. However, the woman crowned the most beautiful in the world has broken her silence.
According to AOL Latino, in an interview for the Spanish-language news show “Al Rojo Vivo” Lopes, 25, responded to allegations that she falsified documents in order to be eligible to win the coveted crown.
“I honestly don’t know where they got that information,” Lopes told the interviewer, according to AOL. “I gave Miss Universe all the required documentation. I’m legal. I just would like to begin the work of Miss Universe. What was said doesn’t affect me because I know that [the naysayers] are in the wrong and I’m in the right. I have the documentation in my hands.”
Lopes also took the time to respond to other allegations that questioned her Angolan heritage, as pageant organizers came across rumors that her parents were from Cuba.
“I’m 100 percent Angolan,” Lopes said debunking the rumors. “The last name Lopes comes from the fact that Angola was colonized by the Portuguese.”
Argentine daily newspaper Infobae reported last Tuesday that the organizer of the pageant who crowned Lopes Miss Angola in her home country, a man name Charles Mukano, falsified documentation Lopes take part in the Miss Universe pageant.
In that same report it was alleged that Mukano helped Lopes win the Miss Angola UK pageant for which only Angolan women living in Great Britain could participate, when Lopes presumably lived in Angola. Mukano allegedly got false documentation stating that Lopes is a business administration student in the UK, according to Infobae’s report. It also noted that in 2009, Mukano was questioned regarding false documents he got after a citizen of Cape Verde citizen almost won Miss Angola, according to AOL Latino.
The press office at Donald Trump’s Miss Universe Organization has since denied to AOL Latino that a Charles Mukano allegedly forged documents allowing Lopes to participate in and win Miss Angola UK.
“We also heard the rumor that her parents were from Cuba and [that] she speaks Spanish, which is false,” the Miss Universe Organization wrote in an e-mail to AOL Latino last week. “We have never heard of [Charles Mukano]. The national director who ran the Miss Angola pageant is Renato Guttler.”
