Last Wednesday, December 4, hours before President Gustavo Petro asked for the resignation of the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, the formal complaint made by the outgoing official to the Prosecutor’s Office came to light. for an alleged case of interference in contracts at the Urrá SA Hydroelectric Power Plant, which would affect the president of Ecopetrol, Ricardo Roa, and Nicolás Alcocer, son of the First LadyVeronica Alcocer.
(You may be interested in: Minhacienda denounces case that affects the son of the first lady and president of Ecopetrol).
Bonilla transferred this anonymous complaint that had arrived to his office and that contained information about alleged irregularities within the company to the investigating entity.
The complaint revealed alleged undue pressure, exerted by Roa and Alcocer, to favor third parties in contracts with the hydroelectric plant.
Ricardo Bonilla, Ricardo Roa and Nicolás Alcocer.
According to this document, the alleged pressure was made through friends close to Nicolás Alcocer. In fact, the name of Daniel Cerón is mentioned, who would be exerting influence to avoid the liquidation of the contract for the Urrá 19.9 solar park and to seek to favor the awarding of new contracts, including that of the Inti II solar park.
(Here: ‘I have nothing to retract’: Petro accuses the Coosalud board of recasting money).
According to the complaint, which is already in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office, there were attempts to benefit the consortium that is executing the Urrá 19.9 solar ecopark: Lux Power 2022, made up of the multinational Powerchina Internacional Group Limited and the firm Luxim Colombia. International Group.
Findings
According to a finding published by the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO, the Chinese multinational of the Urrá project turned out to be the same one that appears executing the ecopark that the president inaugurated in Cartagena in an event to which he invited his son Nicolás Alcocer, now mentioned in the alleged irregularities that former Minister Bonilla transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Even Alcocer – who has maintained a low profile in these 2 years – appears in photos with the President at the inauguration of the work done by the Chinese in Reficar.
Bonilla had already made other investigations into dark dealings in million-dollar contracts in Urrá. In the first, he mentioned companies owned by Marisol Segura, a businesswoman close to Ricardo Roa and his partner, Julián Caicedo, who acquired energy at very low prices.
In the new case, EL TIEMPO investigated and established that the Chinese multinational that won the two solar panel contracts landed in Colombia on October 3, 2018 with the help of Bogota native Óscar Felipe Rueda Plata.
Ricardo Roa.
THE TIME
Silver Wheel and its role
In documents revealed by EL TIEMPO, it is stated that Rueda Plata, a graduate in economics and international trade,he was granted special power by the parent company in China to open the firm, with 20,000 dollars, in the middle of the 93rd park, north of Bogotá.
Rueda Plata’s name draws attention because he has appeared in journalistic records as a member of one of the families close to the Casa de Nariño.
Rueda Plata is the son of Martha Plata, linked to a real estate company – Procomercio SA – that contracts with the State.
And he is the nephew of Carolina Plata, a friend of the first lady and wife of Danilo Romero, with whom the President traveled to Italy after his victory in 2022.
Rueda Plata retired from the Chinese multinational on May 31, 2021; and while his aunt Carolina received protocol and logistics contracts with Dapre, he was appointed, on July 28, 2023, head of the Procolombia office in China.
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EL TIEMPO located him in Beijing and began by confirming that he had been linked to Powerchina since August 2015, as commercial director, but that he had never heard of Nicolás Alcocer or Ricardo Roa.
However, he admitted that he does know who David Cerón Vásquez is, who appears with Nicolás Alcocer and in the Casa de Nariño in photos that are part of the complaint.
Cerón is the founding partner of Luxim Colombia International Group, the other firm that carried out the solar panel work in Urrá. But he transferred it to his wife, Luz Amparo Muñoz Petro, in September 2022. That year, the firm increased capital, jumping from 80 million pesos to 6.7 billion pesos.
Rueda Plata said he met Cerón because months after leaving Powerchina he sought him out to talk to him about his interest in energy projects.
“With regard to Mr. Cerón, although I do not know him personally either, he contacted me weeks after I retired from Powerchina to tell me about his interest in energy projects. “I informed him of my retirement from the company,” Rueda Plata assured, and reiterated that he was unaware of any version of pressure from Nicolás Alcocer or Ricardo Roa.
And the now government official Petro affirmed that there is no inability between his current position and his previous role in the Chinese multinational because two years passed between his retirement from the company and his appointment at Procolombia.
Urrá Hydroelectric
Urrá Hydroelectric
‘Anonymous liar’
Although the Prosecutor’s Office has not yet commented on the information that Bonilla sent him, President Petro assured in a tweet that he is an anonymous liar.
After referring to the resignation of the Minister of Finance and the accusations against him in the UNGRD case, he said: “They are the same people who now say that Bonilla denounced Roa and my son, when he is a simple anonymous liar from the month of October delivered to the Ministry of Finance”.
And in another trill he maintained that David Cerón’s wife – Luz Amparo Muñoz Petro – is not related to him.
However, he gave credibility to one of the sections of the complaint that Bonilla certified: “(…) the contract (for another solar park) Inti 2 was won by a former employee of the Urrá company, a friend of current directors.”
Despite the President’s statement, Urrá managers came out to deny any irregularity. Besides, They ruled out pressure from Alcocer or Roa and even assured that there was no illegality in the sale of energy for 1.4 billion pesos to a handful of companies, including two of the friend of the president of Ecopetrol.
Roa also denied the alleged pressure in favor of the consortium where the Chinese are located, who are now demanding from Urrá an economic imbalance greater than the 60,000 million pesos that, they say, they had been warning about since the Duque government, when the contract was signed. .
Nicolás Alcocer has not spoken out, nor has his friend David Cerón nor the spokespersons for the Chinese firm who insist in documents that they have acted in accordance with the law.
PORTFOLIO
With information from the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO
