In an 85-page ruling, the third section of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca condemned the Nation and the private firm Corficolombiana**, for what he considered errors of the Colombian judicial system, the solidarity payment of what would be the largest reparation in the country’s history in favor of an individual, consisting of the transfer of more than 14 billion pesos.
The payment of this compensation, ordered with a presentation by Judge Clara Cecilia Suárez Vargas, corresponds to almost all of the tax reform approved in 2019 by Congress during the government of President Iván Duque with which it was intended to raise 15.2 billion pesos, already more than half of the reform promoted by President Gustavo Petro, who hopes to raise 20 billion pesos.
The ruling, which goes against what was decided by a civil decongestion judge, by the Superior Court of Bogotá and the Supreme Court of Justice, declares the Nation, the Judicial Branch, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the Executive Directorate of Judicial Administration and Corficolombiana SA, for judicial errors and condemns them to pay for the alleged damages caused to Alejandro González Beltrán.
The case, which has already passed through several instances in the Prosecutor’s Office and in criminal and civil courts, passing through the high courts, dates back to February 12, 1999, when it was presented to the offices of the Valley Finance Corporation (Corfivalle) a messenger from Alejandro González Beltrán to collect three CDTs that in total amounted to 175 and a half million pesos and that were due on February 17 of that same year.
Although these titles appeared in the name of González Beltrán, they set off alarms in Corfivalle by presenting unusual conditions such as a 10-year term and a fixed rate of 31.30 percent per year, capitalizable interest during the term, which did not appear registered or in the entity’s applications did not even have accounting support. Also, it was established that the physical titles that were being presented actually corresponded to those issued in the name of three women.
Corfivalle put the seal of annulment on the titles, did not pay them and filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor for the crimes of falsehood in a private document and fraud. On March 9, 2005, the 9th Criminal Court of Cali sentenced González Beltrán, and in second instance the decision was revoked by the Superior Court of the Valle del Cauca capital.
For the same facts, Luis Ernesto González Valencia, a former employee of the Corporación Financiera del Valle, was prosecuted, who in statements acknowledged that he carried out irregular operations in the entity.
Within the framework of these processes, it was established that González Beltrán gave two versions of the operation, first he said that he took the money in cash on a motorcycle to the Corfivalle branch and then He indicated that it was a transaction associated with previous investments made in portfolio trading businesses that he had with that entity.
In the investigations it was not possible to show how González Beltrán accessed the Corporation’s stationery, but it was clear that it was never proven that the delivery of the resources to acquire those titles existed.
Corficolombiana building.
The rulings of the courts
The acquittal of González Beltrán in the criminal case was the subject of an appeal filed by Corficolombiana, which at that time had perfected the merger with Corfivalle, and the Supreme Court of Justice decided to uphold the Court’s ruling when considering the existence of doubt reasonable that as a rule favors the defendants.
The process returned to the Court of Cali and in Order of September 2007, which was not notified to Corficolombiana, andJudge Juan Manuel Tello agreed to a request from González Beltrán’s defense and returned the titles, noting that they had retained their validity and legality. A month later, due to a guardianship filed by Corficolombiana, the case reached the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, which studied the company’s arguments that underlined that it had been an irregular decision and that the Court’s magistrate had exceeded your competition.
In February 2008, the Court ruled and gave credence to Corficolombiana’s arguments, annulling the decision that returned the titles to González Beltrán and had noted that the titles were still valid. ANDThis decision was challenged by Gonzalez Beltrán. The case went to the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court, which left it firm, rejecting its arguments and once again accepting the position of the financial institution.
The guardianship was then reviewed by the Constitutional Court, which confirmed the decision and warned that the ruling of the magistrate of the Court illegitimately added the annotation on the commercial validity of the titles, noting that this issue was not the subject of debate during the criminal proceeding.
With that legal avenue exhausted, González Beltrán began an executive proceeding in July 2010 and after two changes of court, one of them due to an impediment due to the existence of a previous relationship between the judge and the plaintiff’s lawyer, the case came to an end. to the Tenth Civil Court of the Decongestion Circuit, that he did not agree to the claims and agreed with Corficolombiana, since it was shown that the money object of the deposit never entered Corfivalle.
The appeal of this new decision reached the Superior Court of Bogotá, which upheld the decision, clarifying that when the titles were annulled, they deteriorated and their legal effects disappeared. Once again González Beltrán went to court presenting an appeal that was rejected as inadmissible.
In the long passage of the process through these offices, alleged irregularities were evidenced, such as the alleged use of false documents by the plaintiff and the apparent routing of the case to an office to favor him. This alleged manipulation of the distribution is being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The decision of the executive process in favor of Corficolombiana returned to fulfill a pilgrimage by way of a guardianship, by the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court and the Council of State and in the end it was ratified. González Beltrán then invoked a request for review that is currently pending in the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.
A questioned magistrate appears
The plaintiff went to court again in November 2016 with a demand for direct reparation against the Nation, the Executive Branch, the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the Executive Directorate of Judicial Administration. He argued that the State is patrimonially responsible for the alleged damages suffered by the judicial errors committed by the offices that heard the case and that did not agree to their claims.
The file reached the office of the then magistrate of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca Carlos Alberto Vargas Bautista, who today is prosecuted for corruption and to whom the Prosecutor’s Office seized assets worth 9,000 million pesos that would have been bought with money he would have received for directing his decisions to favor the interests of some of the parties in the processes.
Vargas Bautista is accused of distorting several processes, including one in April 2014, which ordered hea Aqueduct Company of Bogotá the payment of a millionaire sum of money to an individual for direct reparation for not buying a property near the Jaboque wetland and that was in the environmental management zone.
In the most recent actions in that process, Kelly Andrea Eslava, the former magistrate’s ex-partner, negotiated with the Prosecutor’s Office and became a witness for the accusing entity. And four months ago, the Supreme Court of Justice opened a formal investigation and summoned the former departmental comptroller of Cundinamarca and current congressman Néstor Leonardo Rico for allegedly intervening directly before Judge Vargas so that he accepted the claims of two lawsuits.
At the time, even as a magistrate, Vargas Bautista unofficially linked Corficolombiana to the lawsuit against the State for the CDT mess, arguing a relationship between the company and the matter, despite the fact that it did not appear in the initial lawsuit.
It is noteworthy that the company was linked to a process where an alleged error attributed to decisions is discussed. adopted by judicial offices when the entity is not a justice administrator. After the former magistrate left his office, the case was passed on to Judge Clara Cecilia Suárez Vargas, who considered that there was a judicial error by the Superior Court of Bogotá in not validating (because they were annulled) the three CDTs that tried to be collected more than two decades. That supposed error would have extended to the decisions adopted by the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court.
Lawyers consulted pointed out that, in addition to the exotic nature of linking a private company such as jointly and severally liable for an alleged error in the decisions of justice, The most recent ruling reopens, through a process of direct reparation, a debate that is not within the jurisdiction of the Administrative Court, since it deals with the validity of the titles and even pronounces on criminal matters related to crimes of fraud and falsehood against the same plaintiff.
In the framework of the process, the Attorney General’s Office had already warned in November 2019 that “the judicial decisions regarding which the cause of the alleged damage is predicated were issued with arguments that cannot be classified as arbitrary since they correspond to the interpretation of the rules that regulate the securities and observed the evidentiary material duly provided to the process, for which reason it considered that the claims do not have a vocation for prosperity”.
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**Corficolombiana is part of the business group to which Casa Editorial EL TIEMPO belongs.
