The network of corruption due to the theft of resources from the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) shook the Colombian Government this Monday, from which a presidential advisor left, and the Green Alliance party, from which the former mayors of Bogotá resigned Claudia López and Antanas Mockus, two of its most recognized figures.
Last Friday, Sneyder Pinilla, former deputy director of Disaster Management at the UNGRDdenounced the payment of millionaire bribes to the presidents of the Senate, Iván Name (Green Alliance), and of the House of Representatives, Andrés Calle (Liberal Party)in order for the social reforms presented by the Government to be approved in Congress. He also mentioned the Presidential Advisor for the Regions of Colombia, Sandra Ortiz, who is also part of the Green Alliance, whom he accused of being a “messenger.” for the delivering the money to Name in black suitcases full of 50,000 and 100,000 peso bills.
For this reason, the official resigned from her position and stated that she has “full confidence” in her “innocence” and that she is sure that “time and justice will confirm” her “integrity.”
“My resignation is intended to avoid any interference in the processes and proper development of the Government’s actions, especially in the face of the media spectacle that has been generated to discredit me,” he added in a letter sent to the president. Gustavo Petrowho accepted his resignation.
A growing scandal
The corruption scandal that unleashed Ortiz’s resignation had been simmering with complaints in the media about a scheme in which 46.8 billion pesos (about 12 million dollars) were embezzled in the purchase of 40 tanker trucks to bring water to the desert department of La Guajira.
However, the Minister of the Interior, Luis Fernando Velasco, stated in an interview with Noticias Caracol that the information that has reached the Government is that the figure is much higher, of “hundreds of billions of pesos” than what was initially estimated. said.
At the center of the scandal is Olmedo López, a left-wing politician who between April 2023 and February of this year was director of the UNGRD, from where the payment of bribes to Name and Calle was also allegedly ordered.
Velasco, who was director in charge of the UNGRD for a month, in April 2023, has been mentioned in his accusations by López, who said that the current minister “has many things to clarify.”
Crisis in the Green
The Green Alliance party is experiencing its own crisis due to the scandal, which this Monday led Mockus and López to resign from that group, arguing that it no longer represents the values with which it was founded in 2009.
The former mayors are two prominent figures of the Green Alliance, a party divided between being the opposition or an ally of the president’s government.
Mockus, one of the founders of the Green Alliance, sent a letter to the National Directorate of the party in which he assured that “after analyzing the recent and scandalous national events” and the “allegations of corruption” he sees “evident” that many sectors of that movement “have not incorporated the principles that gave rise to the formation of the community.”
“Consequently, following the ethical precepts that have been the foundation and banner of my life, I have decided to withdraw from the party,” said the 72-year-old politician, mathematician and philosopher, who was mayor of the Colombian capital in the 1995 term. -1997 and 2001-2003 and twice presidential candidate, in 2010 and 2014.
Meanwhile, López, who completed her term as mayor of Bogotá on December 31, joined what Mockus said and said that the party “ended up co-opted and controlled by a Petrista minority that does not represent or honor the values, practices and principles” that he has defended and practiced in his life. EFE
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