The State Council gave President Petro two days to retract accusations against Enrique Vargas Lleras

The fourth section of the State Council He ordered President Gustavo Petro retracting having accused Enrique Vargas Llerasyounger brother of former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, having “Hidden” debts of five billion pesos from New EPS “To make it appear falsely that the EPS was fine, only in order to continue milking the State.”

The president pointed out in his account of X to Vargas, former member of the Board of Directors of Nueva EPS – currently intervened by the Superintendence of Health – on January 2, Six months after the Ministry of Health denounced Vargas and four other directors for fraud, unfair and peculation administrationfor allegedly provoking and disguising a billionaire deficit in the entity.

Vargas sued Petro through a guardianship, ensuring that the president violated his fundamental rights to honor and good name. Petro argued that his publication was an opinion based on press reports, criminal investigations and the complaint of the Ministry of Health. The Third Section of the State Council did not prove him right, and defended the former Health Contratist.

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For the high court, the statements of the Head of State were A “direct accusation with criminal connotation” that was not settled in any conviction or administrative sanction. The Presidency, which rejected a request for retracting of Vargas, challenged the sentence, insisting that Petro “only criticized the lack of public control” of “health resources.”

The mess reached the fourth section of the same Council, which in the second instance again demerit the president. The high court warned that, although against Vargas there is a complaint by the Social Protection portfolio, “no judicial decision by which he has been declared criminally responsible of the alleged irregularities mentioned. “

“The operated authority gave as true that the plaintiff hid debts that amounted to five billion pesos when he was a director of the new EPS Based on a criminal complaint, although there is no certainty that this is happening, conviction that is only acquired when the respective criminal sentence is issued“, reproached the fourth section.

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In the sentence it is read that the publication of Petro “does not satisfy the budgets of veracity and reasonableness”, since it should “attend the superior precept of presumption of innocence.” The president “ignored his duty as a public servant” to exercise his freedom of expression “in a responsible manner”since he assumed that Vargas Lleras is guilty and caused the same impression in his audience.

The Secretariat of the Fourth Section notified the sentence to President already Enrique Vargas on August 29. The two days of term that Petro has to retract, they begin to run two business days after sending the decision, that is, the Head of State has until September 4 to warn in his X account that his trill of January 2 is not true.

Petro must indicate in his retraction “that the January 2 message that the plaintiff reproaches does not entail certain facts, because its occurrence must be elucidated in the criminal proceedings initiated with the complaint that the Ministry of Health presented, “explained the State Council. Vargas in his social networks asked Petro” to stop lying and sleeping. “