The National Electoral Council (CNE) announced this Friday that will resume the administrative investigation it is carrying out against the presidential campaign of the current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, for alleged irregular financing of this.
This was stated by the electoral body after the Council of State, the highest administrative litigation court in Colombia, declared the CNE competent to continue with the investigation into the “alleged irregularities in the financing and reporting of income and expenditure” from Petro’s campaign.
“The Council of State declared the competence of the National Electoral Council to impose the corresponding administrative sanctions, if applicable,” the CNE said in a statement.
Last May, the electoral body stated that will study a report by two judges that recommends filing charges against the president, a decision that the president described as the beginning of “a coup d’état”.
(See: Veto on coal exports to Israel moves from economic to legal issue)
The report by judges Álvaro Hernán Prada, former congressman of the right-wing party Centro Democrático, and Benjamín Ortiz, former general secretary of the CNE, He also calls for charges to be brought against Ricardo Roa, president of the state oil company Ecopetrol. and who was Petro’s campaign manager in 2022.
The case against Petro’s presidential campaign began in February 2023 when the CNE decided to open a preliminary investigation for alleged irregularities in its financing based on a “anonymous complaint”.
The agency then explained that the complaint was filed by “alleged irregularities in the financing and reporting of income and expenditure of the first and second round presidential election campaign” of the Historic Pact, the left-wing coalition that brought Petro to the Presidency in 2022.
(More news: Carf announced Juan Sebastián Betancur as its new technical director)
EFE