The Colombian Supreme Court of Justice opened an investigation against five congressmen and a former representative to the Chamber for his alleged connection with acts of corruption in the state emergency response entity, a scandal that also affects several members of the Government and other legislators.
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The Investigative Chamber of the high court explained that this decision is related to “alleged illegal agreements regarding the functions of the members of the Congress of the Republic, as well as alleged irregularities in the approval of projects and possible contracts in the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD).”
Those investigated are senators Liliana Bitar (Conservative Party), Juan Pablo Gallo (Liberal Party) and representatives Wadith Manzur (Radical Change), Julián Peinado (Liberal Party) and Karen Manrique (Special Transitional Peace Circumscriptions).
Also among those investigated is the former representative to the Chamber Juan Diego Muñoz (Alianza Verde), who resigned from his position in February of this year due to “health issues.”
Corruption in the UNGRD
The corruption scandal at the UNGRD, agency that is responsible for attending to and preventing emergencies caused by natural disasters in the country, It was uncovered by the press last February and since then it has grown to reach high-ranking government officials.
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Among those identified is the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, who according to the Prosecutor’s Office was decisive, in coordination with the former director of the UNGRD Olmedo López for the award of three contracts for 92,000 million pesos (about 20.7 million dollars).
According to the investigation, the two officials allegedly sought to benefit the five congressmen and the then representative Muñoz by change that they supported the expansion of the Government’s debt quota.
In that sense, the Court assured today that it took into account “more than fifty documentary evidence obtained with judicial police orders and more than ten testimonial evidence” to build “a hypothesis” according to which the six investigated “they would have agreed to issue concepts regarding public credit operations presented by the Ministry of Finance, in exchange for gifts that would materialize in UNGRD contracts.”
“Specifically, in exchange for endorsing the concepts of credit operations, those authorized would have agreed on gifts, corresponding to projects that would be processed at the UNGRD, in (the towns of) Cotorra, Saravena and in Carmen de Bolívar,” the court added.
For this reason, the five congressmen and the former representative will be summoned to investigations to “to advance in the clarification of the facts and establish whether the criminal law was violated and who would have been the subjects of that violation.”
UNGRD tank car.
UNGRD
Other congressmen investigated
Due to this case, the Supreme Court of Justice also opened an investigation last week against the former presidents from the Senate Iván Name and from the House of Representatives Andrés Calle.
Senator Name, from the Green Alliance, and Representative Calle, from the Liberal Partywere accused of the crimes of improper bribery and embezzlement by appropriation in favor of third parties.
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Last May, the former deputy director of the UNGRD Sneyder Pinilla revealed that the UNGRD money was used in 2023 to pay millionaire bribes to Name and Calle.
That money supposedly was diverted from the allocation for the purchase of 40 tanker trucks to supply water to the Caribbean department of La Guajiraa project in which resources were misappropriated because the vehicles purchased did not meet the technical conditions, among other failures.
EFE
