$161
million pesos Carvajal has contracted with the State in the last 5 years.
It’s not an easy coincidence to ignore that Hector Carvajalthe until recently unknown lawyer who has been in charge of reunite Uribe with Petro on three occasionsbe also the representative of Enilce del Rosario López Romero, alias La Gata, mother of Jorge Luis Alfonso López.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Carvajal’s name did not make headlines, however, after it became known that it was in his apartment that the president and former president met last Friday, February 3, to talk about Total Peace, the health reform and the Bogotá metro, this 68-year-old from Valle del Cauca has taken all the spotlights.
Apparently, Carvajal began to gain influence in the Petro government since he first met Uribe as president-elect in his office in June last year. From there, his role in the government has been on the rise to such an extent that today he seems the most likely to become the next Attorney General of the Nation in the absence of a year for Francisco Barbosa to hand over his position.
Carvajal is one of the trusted men of the President. So much so that Petro delegated him the defense of the mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero, when the Attorney General’s Office suspended him for improper participation in politics for openly supporting the then candidate of the Historical Pact in May of last year.
The relationship between Carvajal and Petro began after Petro’s unsuccessful impeachment process as mayor of Bogotá in 2013, since Carvajal was part of the defense of the now president in the cases derived from that litigation. In 2017, Petro wrote on his Twitter account: “Congratulations to Héctor Carvajal, Iván Acuña, Julio César Ortíz and Luis E Parra, firm in the defense of democracy in the Attorney General’s Office and in the Council of State” (SIC).
Uribe, for his part, is also grateful to Carvajal, since it was he who defended his sons Jerónimo and Tomás in the process related to the multi-million dollar business of the Western Free Trade Zone in the municipality of Mosquera, Cundinamarca. In March 2021, the State Council announced that it found no irregularities on the part of the former president’s children.
In addition to assuming the defense of the Uribe, Petro, Quintero and La Gata, the fashionable lawyer also represents other controversial politicians and businessmen who have been singled out in major corruption scandals or for their ties to illegal armed groups, such as he Conservative Congressman Alfredo ‘Ape’ Cuello, who was investigated in 2007 for alleged links to the AUC; the pastor Mary Louise Piraquive, leader of the Ministerial Church of God of Jesus Christ International and matron of the Mira party; the deposed and disabled ex-governor of La Guajira, Oneida PintoMore; the former president of Saludcoop and sentenced to ten years in prison, Gustavo Palacino and the Aguilar de Santander Clan.
These controversial defenses, added to the news of the release of La Gata’s son barely a week after the meeting between Petro and Uribe, have generated suspicions about whether the lawyer’s closeness to the two most powerful men in national politics and his eventual candidacy as Attorney General could mean a exchange of favors that ends in impunity for those represented by Carvajal. Who, in case of reaching the Prosecutor’s Office, he would be in charge of the case of alleged witness tampering and procedural fraud facing President Uribe. This, some say, could be the reason for the benevolence that the former president has shown up to now with the government of the Historical Pact.
When asked about his possible candidacy as Attorney General and the possible conflicts of interest he would face, Carvajal replied to W Radio that: “The decision of who will be the next Attorney General is not mine, the shortlist is decided by the President Petro, but I have a track record and experience in this, I know the problems of the branch, and I consider that making a contribution to the country”.
