A significant number of officials of the current government, or who have been, have open investigations in the Prosecutor’s Office or the control bodies, the Attorney General’s Office and the Comptroller’s Office. The most recent case is María Isabel Urrutia, who before leaving the post of Minister of Sports, she signed more than a hundred contracts for the provision of services irregularly, according to the investigating authorities.
In all the governments, various officials have been investigated, especially in disciplinary matters by the Attorney General’s Office, some fiscally by the General Comptroller’s Office and a few criminally by the Attorney General’s Office.
However, it is surprising that the current government accumulates a high number of officials ‘charged’ with investigations in just 10 months of being installed.
The previous Friday, the Prosecutor’s Office announced that it will charge the former Minister of Sports María Isabel Urrutia for the crime of contract without compliance with legal requirements.
The Prosecutor’s Office indicated about Urrutia that “after being asked to resign, the former official ordered the early termination of 106 contracts for the provision of services and management support, and immediately signed them to extend the term of execution.”
Urrutia assured that his actions at the head of this portfolio were framed in the law. “I don’t see where the Prosecutor’s Office can accuse me of having organized the Ministry,” considered the former official.
ministers
There are four ministers investigated by the Attorney General’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office for different reasons.
The head of the Treasury, Ricardo Bonilla, has an investigation open in the Attorney General’s Office from when he was Secretary of the Treasury of Bogotá, in the Petro mayor’s office, because he omitted to transfer some resources to the Colombian Federation of Municipalities.
While last April the Prosecutor’s Office opened an inquiry into cost overruns of nearly 17 million dollars that would have been registered in the purchase of 55 military trucks. On that occasion, prosecutor Francisco Barbosa announced that, among others, the Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, will be called to testify.
The Attorney General’s Office also opened a preliminary investigation into these events, which includes Minister Velásquez. The official is also related to a file initiated by the Public Ministry for the kidnapping of about 70 police officers in San Vicente del Caguan by peasants who were carrying out a protest.
One of the uniformed men was assassinated at the hands of the peasants and the others humiliated and stripped of their weapons.
It is being investigated whether there was a fault on the part of the minister and military commanders for not ordering the rescue of the police officers. The Government explained that the use of force was avoided to prevent more victims.
Due to these facts, the Attorney General’s Office also opened an investigation into the then Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada, who left the cabinet in the second shake that President Petro produced last May.
The then minister Prada described the retention of the 70 uniformed officers as a humanitarian siege, which was strongly questioned by the political opposition, which said that it was a kidnapping.
Even the then director of the Police, General Henry Sanabria, described these events as kidnapping. This declaration would have produced discomfort in the Government that motivated the officer to leave office.
While the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, has more than thirty investigations active in the Attorney General’s Office, most of them due to his tenure at the head of the Ibagué Mayor’s Office. One can be seen from the signing of an agreement with the Folkloric Corporation for December Illumination, because the selection process would have been avoided.
The Attorney General’s Office also opened an investigation into the Minister of Mines, Irene Vélez, after the then Vice Minister of Energy, Belizza Ruiz, stated that the report she presented on gas reserves in Colombia, which she said exists until 2041, had inconsistencies. .
The Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether there is a falsehood in said report, because some officials who appear in it assure that they did not sign it.
Other cases
It was also learned that the director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (Ungrd), Olmedo López Martínez, has an investigation in the 41st Prosecutor’s Office of the municipality of La Estrella (Antioquia).
This refers to a complaint before López came to the Government, which was presented by a former partner of his, Carlos Zapata, at the company Comercializadora Practimax SA
Zapata assures that López “abused trust and destroyed the company.”
For his part, the national health superintendent, Ulahy Beltrán, presents two investigations in the Comptroller’s Office from when he served as manager of the CARI university hospital in Barranquilla.
The investigations have to do with the fact that the then manager allegedly omitted to file some invoices for services rendered, which would have caused patrimonial damage to the aforementioned hospital.
Beltrán explained that this case occurred before he managed the hospital and that, on the contrary, the steps he took prevented the liquidation of the entity.
Sarabia and Benedetti
The Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office opened investigations into Laura Sarabia, who was chief of staff, and other public servants, because her ex-nanny Marelbys Meza was taken against her will to the polygraph in a dependency of the Presidency of the Republic, after the then official reported the theft of $4,000 from his residence.
Likewise, Sarabia will be called to testify in the investigation that was opened due to the tricks that the police carried out on Meza and also on a woman who was doing domestic chores in the house of the then official when the aforementioned money disappeared.
The attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, revealed that these interceptions were illegal because the uniformed Police, serving the security of the Casa de Nariño and the Sarabia scheme, presented false investigations against these women to obtain authorization to listen to their communications. , noting that they supposedly provided domestic services to heads of the Clan del Golfo.
While last Friday the Prosecutor’s Office announced the opening of an investigation into the presidential campaign of Gustavo Petro in 2022, after the former ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, in some WhatsApp audios that he sent to Sarabia, said that if he revealed about the $15 billion that he says he got on the north coast, “we all sink, we all finish, we go to jail.”
Benedetti then explained that these statements were made out of anger because the government was not giving him the treatment he considered he deserved after what he did in the campaign.
However, the Prosecutor’s Office will call him to testify to explain the scope of his serious remarks.
It is worth remembering that President Petro chose to remove Sarabia and Benedetti from the government, because in the midst of the scandal because they applied the polygraph to the ex-nanny, it was learned that the then chief of staff blamed the outgoing ambassador for allegedly using Mesa to be media to tell what happened, with the purpose of affecting their image.