Bogotá. President Gustavo Petro at present responded to a rising corruption scandal that has relentlessly occupied the Colombian information agenda and includes ministers, former ministers and high-ranking state officers, accused of getting distributed profitable contracts to congressmen in trade for his or her favorable votes for presidency initiatives within the legislature.
The pinnacle of state used his X account to recall that greater than 20 years in the past, when he was a parliamentarian, he denounced this follow, generally known as “indicative contracting quotas”, used in order that congressmen, their pleasant mayors and personal contractors might hold giant sums “that had been then used to finance elections, paramilitaries and private fortunes”.
Petro’s indignant response to the continued look of “new proof,” “secret paperwork,” and “chat conversations” of these allegedly concerned, got here after a Supreme Court docket workplace leaked to some media shops fragments of the assertion of Olmedo López, former director of the Workplace of Threat and Catastrophe Administration, at present in jail after being caught in critical acts of corruption in the course of the administration of a drought emergency within the northern division of La Guajira.
As soon as found and with a purpose to mitigate his sentence, López requested for a “precept of alternative” earlier than the court docket, assuring that he had proof that the workplace beneath his cost was utilized by the manager to pay favors to congressmen via the awarding of contracts.
He recounted particulars of alleged conferences on the Casa de Nariño and within the workplaces of the Ministers of Finance and the Inside, the place – he mentioned – he was given exact directions for the allocation of public funds via a community of middle-ranking officers answerable for making certain that the cash reached its vacation spot.
Though the Legal professional Basic’s Workplace has not but discovered grounds for calling the officers named by López to testify, and no conclusive proof has but been offered that the outdated follow of “sustaining governability by shopping for consciences” has been engaged in, most media shops insist on turning up the amount on what they don’t hesitate to name “the largest corruption scandal in historical past.”
If not, native analysts say, it is going to go down in historical past as the largest and greatest coordinated media scandal in latest occasions to discredit a authorities regardless of the absence of proof.
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– 2024-07-23 00:01:34
