The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro said it is not true that money has gone to the ELN guerrilla from corrupt contractsas reported to the courts by the former director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) Olmedo López, who said he accommodated himself to the “pot of corruption” of that entity.
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Petro recently expressed this on his social media account X, where he also responded to press reports about the possible use of funds from the Unit to process and approve executive projects in Congress.
“If Olmedo’s version about the three contracts managed by parliamentarians and officials that Olmedo abusively and deceitfully points out as a possible source of financing predetermined by the government to the ELN, I must say that these contracts were not verified, that is, public money never went to its objective“, the head of state assured.
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Petro said that justice has all the freedom and the right to investigate what happened in this case.but, he said, “A possible fact where public resources did not come out due to the direct intervention of the president, cannot hide the fact of the tanker contracts, the ‘caregato’ contract, where stolen public funds did come out and I demand that they be returned to the last peso.“.
The scandal at UNGRD began when local media revealed last February the alleged embezzlement of 46.8 billion pesos in the purchase of 40 tanker trucks to transport drinking water to desert areas of the Caribbean department of La Guajira.
(See: Corruption at UNGRD: missing memory cards and hard drives reported).
Added to this is the revelation that Money from that entity was apparently used to pay bribes to the Senate presidents.Iván Name (Green Alliance), and the House of Representatives, Andrés Calle (Liberal Party), and other congressmen in exchange for support in Congress for the social reforms proposed by Petro.
Scandal at UNGRD.
iStock
In a statement he gave last month to investigators from the Supreme Court of Justice, revealed on Tuesday by ‘Noticias Caracol’, López said: “This is a network that includes ministers and contractors, but in the middle there are other officials (…) and it affects an actor who has a very strong military capacity.“.
“The name on that paper that I showed to the Prosecutor’s Office and that appears in the summary of my statement (…) is the ELN and its great influence in the department of Arauca (bordering Venezuela)“, Lopez added.
Pot of corruption
In another section of his writing, Petro, who appointed López as director of UNGRD, said that the official, instead of being part of the corruption plot, should have filed a complaint, as his replacement, Carlos Carrillo, did.
“When Olmedo discovered the ‘pot of corruption’ that had been consolidated for years at UNGRD, he should have, instead of adapting to it, reported it to the President and to the courts, just as the current director does.“, Petro warned.
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‘Noticias Caracol’ has also revealed information released by López and by the former deputy director of Disaster Management at UNGRD, Sneyder Pinilla, in which They involve other members of the Government such as the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla.
In some Pinilla chats revealed on Wednesday, it is shown how, supposedly, Bonilla coordinated the delivery of 3 contracts for 92 billion pesos (about 23 million dollars) that were intended to benefit 6 congressmen so that they would support the increase of the Government’s debt limit.
In the coming days, López and Pinilla are expected to be brought before the courts to hear the charges, at the start of the trial of the biggest corruption scandal of the Petro government so far.
EFE
