The Council of State annulled the three-year disqualification against the former mayor of Neiva and former governor of Huila, Cielo González Villa, which the Attorney General’s Office imposed on her in 2012. The political leader left the Governor’s Office for accumulating three sanctions in less than five years. The decision of the high court prioritizes the judgment of the Petro case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CDH).
Rafael Rodríguez C.
rafael@lanacion.com.co
The former mayor, Cielo González Villa, was exonerated from the inability to hold and perform public functions imposed on her by the Attorney General’s Office and which ended up removing her from the Huila Governor’s Office, for accumulating three disciplinary sanctions in less than five years.
And it is that the State Council, through the Administrative Litigation Chamber, annulled the supervening three-year disability that it imposed against the then president of the Neivanos, the control body, for irregularities in an inter-administrative agreement for 944 million pesos with the Surcolombiana University, in 2008.
In a second instance decision, the Attorney General’s Office sanctioned González Villa with suspension from office for 3 months, which became a fine of 16,824,261 pesos, for not serving as mayor, and three-year inability to hold public office. As the
The Public Ministry maintained that since Cielo González Villa completes three disciplinary sanctions for committing serious offenses, “she is subject to a supervening disability.”
the irregularity
The former president was sanctioned for allowing Usco to execute the inter-administrative agreement for 944 million pesos, without the university having the technical capacity and specific experience in this type of work.
The agreement was signed for the university to carry out the technical supervision of the works corresponding to eight public works contracts for the construction and repair of roads, as well as for the construction or adaptation of buildings, despite the fact that said university institution did not have educational programs related to the purpose of the intervention that was contracted.
The attorney general’s office pointed out that according to Law 734 of 2002, it is not possible to aggravate the sanction because despite the fact that a disciplinary sanction consisting of a 6-month suspension appeared on record, “it began its legal effects on August 31, 2009, by virtue of the ruling issued in second instance by the office of the Attorney General of the Nation”.
It added that in the same way, the Disciplinary Chamber in July 2012 handed down a second instance ruling against the departmental president for committing conduct contrary to the Law in her capacity as municipal mayor of Neiva. “This sanction consisted of a two-month suspension.”
council of state
The former mayor González Villa, demanded the annulment of the disciplinary administrative acts of July 25 and December 3, 2012, issued by the Second Delegate Attorney for State Contracting and the Disciplinary Chamber of the Attorney General of the Nation, with which she was sanctioned.
The Council of State, upon ruling on the claim for nullity, declared the partial nullity of the disciplinary ruling of December 2012 handed down by the disciplinary chamber of the control body, “but only in that, in second instance, it decided to impose on the plaintiff the incapacity supervening of 3 years… as a consequence of having accumulated 3 sanctions in the last 5 years”.
The supervening disability of three years was what prevented González Villas from continuing as governor of Huila for the period 2012-2015.
The former mayor, in addition to requesting the annulment of the inability to hold public office, requested the Council of State to return the 16,824,261 pesos that she had to pay as a fine and requested the sum of 100 current legal minimum wages to compensate the non-pecuniary damages that the disciplinary sanction caused him.
The claims were not decided in favor of González Villa. “It preserves the presumption of legality of the other sanctioning decisions adopted in the administrative acts of first and second instance defendant,” said the high court.
The Council of State questioned the jurisdiction of the Attorney General’s Office to impose a sanction of disability and suspension on González Villa as she is a public official elected as mayoress of Neiva and governor of Huila, in light of the national legal system and the American Convention on Human Rights. Humans.
“This Subsection considered that the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, especially that issued in the cases of López Mendoza against Venezuela in 2011 and Petro Urrego against Colombia in 2020, evidences a new normative context, which due to the postulate of living law , obliges the judicial and administrative authorities to carry out an interpretation of the internal legal system in accordance with the American Convention on Human Rights”, states the ruling of the high court.
He added that possibly the reproached conduct is atypical because the Attorney General’s Office did not take into account that Usco enjoys autonomy, independence and its own legal control regime “in any case, the state contracting regime allows for contracts with public entities.”
The high court said that the Public Ministry had not taken into account that, according to clause 7 of the agreement, the suspension of the same corresponded to the Secretariat of Infrastructure and Roads and not to the mayoress of Neiva, therefore the control and surveillance contractual was not part of his duties, so possibly the disciplinary decision against him is illegal.
firm condemnation
Last August, the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the sentence against the former mayoress of Neiva, Cielo González Villa, the perpetrator responsible for the crime of contract without compliance with legal requirements.
The conviction against the former mayor was for the execution of the international cooperation contract 18 years ago, with the Executive Secretariat of the Andrés Bello Agreement (Secab), signed on April 15, 2005, supposedly to improve the aqueduct of the Huilense capital.
The document was signed by the then mayor and the deputy secretary of the international organization Omar José Muñoz Ramírez, a Venezuelan national, and delivered directly, on the recommendation of his advisors, without exhausting any selection process for the comprehensive study and detailed design for the improvement of the aqueduct system of the municipality of Neiva. The Mayor’s Office contributed 360 million pesos, the sum of which, the Secab discounted in advance the value equivalent to 3.5% of each of the contributions in money.
