The Attorney General’s Office opened a preliminary investigation against the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, and against the former Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco, for the corruption scandal at UNGRD.
(You may be interested in: Corruption at UNGRD: missing memory cards and hard drives reported).
Carlos Ramón González, National Intelligence Director, and Sandra Ortiz, former Presidential Advisor for the Regions, will also be subject to preliminary investigation.
The opening of this investigation comes after these people were implicated in this scandal when chats were revealed in which they were mentioned in order to divert resources from the entity to pay congressmen in order to approve projects of the Petro Government.
(We also recommend: Chats revealed implicating the Ministry of Finance in corruption scandal at UNGRD).
About, President Gustavo Petro defended this Thursday the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, who he said is one of the best economists in the country.
UNGRD tank truck.
UNGRD
In chats with former UNGRD Deputy Director of Disaster Management Sneyder Pinilla, published on Wednesday by Noticias Caracol, it is shown how Bonilla supposedly coordinated the delivery of 3 contracts for 92 billion pesos (about 23 million dollars) that were intended to benefit six congressmen so that they would support the expansion of the Government’s borrowing limit.
“Do you know what the Minister of Finance, who is now vilified, who is a doctor in economics and is one of the best economists in the country, who is a serious and honest man, was doing? What he was trying to do was to make the interparliamentary credit commission fulfill its function.”the president said at a government event.
(Besides: ‘Dark clouds’ over Colombia’s investment climate, according to the State Department).
He added that the role of this commission is not to approve laws but rather the loans with which his government has to pay the debts that, he said, were left by his predecessor, Iván Duque.
“That is what the interparliamentary commission was doing, it was demanding that the minister approve the debt and benefit its regions (…) Now it is bad because they asked the Minister of Finance for three projects for their respective towns, but it was very good when they asked him for hundreds and thousands of projects.” to ministers of other governments, Petro said.
BRIEFCASE
