Local press magnifies accusations of former official imprisoned for embezzling emergency funds

Jorge Enrique Botero

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Friday, July 19, 2024, p. 28

Bogotá. President Gustavo Petro yesterday responded to a growing corruption scandal that has been constantly occupying the Colombian news agenda and involves ministers, former ministers and high-ranking officials, accused of having distributed lucrative contracts to congressmen in exchange for their votes for government initiatives in the Legislative Branch.

The head of state used his X account to recall that more than 20 years ago, when he was a parliamentarian, he denounced this practice, known as indicative hiring quotasused so that legislators, their friendly mayors and private contractors could keep large sums which were then used to finance elections, support paramilitaries or increase personal fortunes.

Petro’s angry reaction to the continued appearance of new evidence, secret documents and chat conversations of those allegedly involved, occurred after a Supreme Court office leaked to some media outlets fragments of the statement of Olmedo de Jesús López, former director of the Office of Risk and Disaster Management, currently in prison after being caught in serious acts of corruption during the management of a drought emergency in the northern department of La Guajira.

Once discovered, and in order to mitigate his sentence, López requested a principle of opportunity before the court, claiming that he had proof that the office under his charge was used by the Executive to pay favors to congressmen by awarding contracts.

He recounted details of alleged meetings at the Casa de Nariño and in the offices of the Ministers of Finance and the Interior, where – he claimed – he was given instructions for the allocation of public funds through a network of middle-ranking officials in charge of ensuring that the money reaches its destination.

Although the Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría) has not yet found merits to call the officials named by López to testify, nor has there been any conclusive evidence so far that the old practice of Maintaining governability by buying consciencesmost media insist on turning up the volume on what they do not hesitate to describe as the biggest corruption scandal in history.

If not, local analysts say, it will go down in history as the biggest and best coordinated media scandal in recent times to discredit a government despite the absence of evidence.