The arrival of Salvatore Mancuso to Colombia, after 16 years, to comply with national justice, delivering information concerning the armed conflict in the country, continues to generate a political and judicial earthquake.
During his first hearing before the Special Peace Jurisdiction (JEP), in which he was granted freedom on probation for four years, it was notified that the former AUC commander delivered 476 assets to the Attorney General’s Office for the Fund of Victim Reparation, along with $2.9 billion.
According to the defense of the former paramilitary, houses valued at more than $25,000 million and properties of up to two thousand hectares were delivered.
One of those properties is the Mi Refugio farm, in Tierralta, Córdoba, which according to the real estate registration, has 58 hectares and is part of the Hacienda Nueva Esperanza, which in the late 90s was a military and ideological training center for the AUC.
But an investigation by the newspaper El Colombiano found that that property would continue under Mancuso’s name, despite the fact that judicial measures are being imposed on it.
He has a criminal seizure order from the Superior Court of Barranquilla since February 17, 2007. In addition, he has 15 annotations, 13 of them since the process of delivering land to victims in Córdoba and Antioquia began.
The property was handed over by the former paramilitary leader in 2007, when he was held in the Itagüí maximum prison, three years after he had demobilized. As he was negotiating with the Attorney General’s Office for a reduction in his sentence, the investigating body asked his lawyers to begin the procedures to deliver land, changing the titles of the front men.
One of those front men was a man named Pedro Ignacio Ghisays, a renowned businessman from Córdoba, who since 2005 had the Mi Refugio farm and two others named Tierragrata and La Esperanza in his name. In the Third Notary Office of Montería, the titles of those properties were transferred to Mancuso, according to the aforementioned media.
The license plate records show that the Mi Refugio farm was originally acquired as vacant land by a man identified as Rosemberg Guevara, in 2005, through the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform, Incora.
Another version appears in the property deeds, where it is recorded that Guevara bought the land from two farmers from Montería through a parcel of land from the other properties, although it is not specified for what value.
The fact is that six months after acquiring the property, on October 5, 2006, Guevara sold it to Ghisays for $8.7 billion and two and a half years later, the businessman sold the property to Mancuso for $37.8 billion.
Afterwards, the Superior Court of Barranquilla ordered its seizure and since 2022 it has new judicial prohibitions that prohibit trading with the property. In any case, Mi Refugio is part of the Government’s land delivery program and the now peace manager must do everything so that that and other properties reach the hands of the victims.
The authorities hope that a good amount of money will be raised with the properties handed over by Mancuso, to provide compensation to people affected by the criminal and violent activities of the AUC.
“In order for the corresponding decisions to be adopted, to have in the short term, definitive conclusions regarding the persecution of assets with respect to the aforementioned postulates and all of the former militants of the aforementioned criminal organization, which is repeated not only “is presented with respect to Salvatore Mancuso, but in general of all those who served as commanders of the different self-defense structures,” said the JEP judge at Mancuso’s hearing. With Infobae