Photos taken from: El Espectador and Semana
Olmedo López gloated by telling anyone who would listen that he was a man of the left. Although he has been part of the Democratic Pole since 2006, and worked closely with Senator Clara López, Olmedo is closer to the Conservative party than he wants to admit. He was born in Itagui and worked in this mayor’s office when he was under the command of the current senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo, one of the great squires in Antioquia of former mayor Daniel Quintero. Olmedo, as revealed by W Radio, was secretary of the environment in that mayor’s office.
Few knew Olmedo López before the scandal of the tank trucks with which they wanted to quench their thirst in La Guajira. But before these events occurred what was not given the necessary dimension. Shortly after the comptroller’s office suspended it on December 5, 2023, a march arose, practically out of nowhere, in front of the facilities of the National Risk Management Unit, speaking out about the decision of the control entity. The slogans of “Olmedo, friend, the people are with you” still echo from a march of 3,000 protesters who started walking from the Comptroller’s Office to the UNGRD. They wanted to present Olmedo as a mass phenomenon, a politician with strong popular roots. W Radio investigated at the time the origin of the resources of the protesters who arrived from territories on the Caribbean Coast and, although at the beginning it was said that resources had been obtained from the initiative and push of leaders of action boards communal, there were testimonies, such as that of the social leader Eliecer Polanco, who stated that these demonstrations had been financed with public money.
Once López’s comptroller is suspended, he, in his populist delirium, decides to deliver the tank trucks that would quench the thirst of La Guajira. The person in charge of delivering them was Sneyder Pinilla, the former deputy director of the UNGRD who went out last week to throw Petro government officials into the water, such as the presidential advisor of regions Sandra Ortiz, who, Pinilla stated, would have given him 3,000 million pesos. allocated to the UNGRD to Iván Name, president of the Senate, to help manage the reforms in Congress. Next Wednesday, May 8, Pinilla must attend a hearing where he must provide evidence of his accusations. In the matrix where he provided names of senators allegedly bribed by Petro is the president of the Chamber Andrés Calle. Sandra Ortíz was removed from her position by presidential decision, as was her transparency secretary Andrés Idarraga.
What is the tanker scandal?
What does this scandal consist of, where more than forty billion pesos were lost? Carlos Carrillo, the current director of the Disaster Management Unit – the fourth that Petro places in less than two years of his government – found the following: on October 12, 2023, the first 40 will be hired – for 1,170 million each – with a company called Impoamericana Roger SAS, its owner, according to Infobae, was a 26-year-old man from Pastuso named Roger Alexandra Pastas Fuertes, a veterinarian by profession. The company has been based in Cúcuta since 2017 and, in theory, according to its business records, it is more of a hardware store than anything else. It is not easy to have forty tank cars made and in Colombia there are few companies with the capacity to produce these tank cars. Of the forty tank cars, according to Carlos Carrillo, the director of the UNGRD that Petro put in place after the scandal, only nine were properly built by the Romarco company. It was highly unlikely that the machines would be ready in the time required. The others were ordered to be made by a company called Incoltanques, the quality was much inferior and 21 of the other tank cars were ordered to be made by a company that does not have any type of track record. Those vehicles were never ready.
What Carrillo found at the UGRD was terrifying. It was an organization open to theft. “The delay in document management was terrifying, officials could go up and delete whatever they wanted. The disorder is like that to put your hands in that trunk full of gold coins.” Carrillo told María Jimena Duzán in an interview for her podcast.
Petro has found in Carrillo the solution for one of the entities where the greatest corruption has occurred since previous governments. In the confession that Sneyder Pinilla made to journalist Daniel Coronell, he recommended his former boss, Olmedo López, who is a fugitive from justice, to speak and tell the truth. In the last few hours, an audio recording of Olmedo López was released asking the Prosecutor’s Office for a principle of opportunity since he did not act on his own initiative but rather received orders. His confession would spill over into powerful people in the national government.
Since the beginning of this year, the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation has proposed a national anti-corruption trial led by a special chamber in the Supreme Court of Justice, with the support of a mixed commission of experts from Colombian civil society and the international community and with the support of the Attorney General’s Office. Some officials, such as the outgoing transparency secretary, tried to manipulate the proposal, as denounced by Mexican researcher Michel Levin in a column that will be published on this page.
Olmedo López is a mistake that could be very costly for this government.