Marco Tulio Quintero Cano is 72 years old, a past as a mafia lawyer and the keys to the file that has former magistrate Eduardo Castellanos Roso in prison.
“I take the money, I call Castellanos Roso so that we can see each other, we make the appointment, in the Oma of race 7 with 23, and there I take the 20,000 dollars,” said Marco Tulio Quintero Cano, former lawyer of alias ‘el Mellizo’ , in a recording.
According to the witness, between 2013 and 2014, the lawyer received $ 50,000 from the drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Mejía Múnera, alias ‘el Mellizo’, in order to favor him in Justice and Peace. In detail, before the Supreme Court of Justice, the drug’s former lawyer told how he himself gave him that money.
“It was done at the last table at the back, at the foot of the cafeteria bathroom, there were very few people, there I told him that I had, well, the gift they sent him, and it was in a manila envelope, and I passed it to him. under the table and he took it, ”said Quintero Cano.
Noticias Caracol learned about the insides of this process and obtained 20 hours of public hearings in which Marco Tulio Quintero reaffirmed his accusations against former magistrate Castellanos Roso. There he related that the first approach to the jurist was given through a handwritten letter, which, according to him, ‘the Twin’ sent the magistrate from the United States.
“He analyzed the letter with me and there he is saying that there he sends him that communication, that he is going to send him $ 20,000, that he is not committed to absolutely anything, that he is not buying it at all, he is not making demands of any nature. , but that he hoped that, in what he could, he would collaborate with him and that he was very grateful to the people who helped him to move forward with the issues, “said the lawyer in another video.
In the words of Quintero Cano, It was the first installment of the bribery to the magistrate who had his process in Justice and Peace.
“Excuse me for the terminology, nobody works without a thimble, because Miguel Ángel already knew what he wanted to do with that: compromise him,” he added.
On account of those 50,000 dollars, added the witness, the case of ‘el Mellizo’ was delayed too much and the magistrate Castellanos Roso granted multiple postponements to the defense.
At the same time, however, the Prosecutor’s Office requested the expulsion of the drug trafficker from the Justice and Peace process for not honoring their commitments to truth, justice and reparation to the victims.
To avoid his exclusion, Marco Tulio Quintero offered him 700 million pesos. According to his confession, they met in Villaviencio, in a cholados stand, very close to the airport.
“I told him exactly ‘Eduardo, what would the hole that would have to be opened to bury 700 million pesos look like? And then he smiled nervously and said’ why? ‘ and I said ‘well, brother, they authorized me to offer you that, you will see if you accept them or not, “said Quintero.
According to Quintero Cano, Castellanos did not accept that money because another judge of the court was convinced that ‘el Mellizo’ had to be expelled and because, in addition, the process was hot due to anonymous already circulating about the proximity between the magistrate and the narco-paramilitary lawyer.
In the end, on July 13, 2015, ‘el Mellizo’ was expelled from Justice and Peace, and Eduardo Castellanos signed that ruling. The matter remained until there, but two years later the prosecutor Hilda Niño was captured, accused of favoring the paramilitary bloc of said drug.
The Prosecutor’s Office continued its investigations and began to investigate Quintero, who confessed his crimes. But, before doing so, he made sure to record Judge Castellanos.
“As the defense of the guilty party is always to preach innocence, I imagined that Dr. Castellanos Roso was going to deny having received those monies and, knowing who Mr. Miguel Ángel Mejía Múnera is, could you imagine if I had not delivered those monies in what situation would have put me, “said the lawyer in another video.
And he added: “So, under those circumstances, I wanted to take those recordings to show Mr. Mejía Múnera at any time that I had given those money.”
In those 2018 recordings, Magistrate Castellanos told the lawyer that he was offering him money for his silence. This is stated in the prosecution’s accusation:
“In those meetings, Castellanos Roso offered him sums of money, initially of 3 million pesos, increasing to 10 million pesos, so that Mr. Quintero Cano would be calm and not declare the truth of what happened.”
Is the accusation of the lawyer Quintero Cano so forceful? For the representative of the victims, Francisco Bernate, it is and should be condemned.
“For us, in effect, the evidence provided by the witness Marco Tulio Quintero is overwhelming against the former magistrate Eduardo Castellanos. Not only is it his statement, but he has also provided recordings that we consider are quite important to demonstrate his responsibility, “he said.
On the other side, lawyer David Albarracín, defender of the former magistrate, maintains that the witness is a consummate liar, that his version is a patchwork quilt, that contradictions abound and that there is no proof that Castellanos had allowed himself to be groped by Mafia.
“It was determined that Marco Tulio Quintero usually presents himself to his clients as if he had influence or knowledge or friendship with judicial officials, we determined this with interviews with several judicial officials from the Villavicencio district,” he said.
And he noted that “any money that this lawyer has requested from Mejía Múnera for any illegal purpose, very possibly went to the pockets of Marco Tulio Quintero Cano.”
That is, according to Albarracín, the lawyer of ‘el Mellizo’ stole that money and to justify that return he tried to trap the former magistrate Castellanos.
“And, obviously, this affability and this gift of people and this humanism and this simplicity of Dr. Eduardo Castellanos make him prey to unscrupulous people and the defense has no doubt that he was assaulted in his good faith by this lawyer Marco Tulio. Quintero Cano ”, he affirmed.
The lawyer Albarracín added that the star witness of the Prosecutor’s Office has a dark past and that he is not to be trusted, in addition to the fact that several judges at the finish line would not let him go up to their offices because he later said that he could manipulate them.
In addition, he criticized that former magistrate Castellanos has spent more than two years in prison on behalf of a single witness and some recordings that, he says, do not prove anything.
“It is not consistent for a person to accept $ 50,000 and then not accept not 700, but 1,000 million that they were offered. Therefore, this offer of money and this supposed delivery of money is plagued by contradictions from the rules of experience and the principles of logic ”, he asserted.
Apart from the shadows of the witness and the shadows of the magistrate, the case continues. The Supreme Court of Justice carefully analyzes the evidence in the file, while the defense of Castellanos assures that ‘the Twin’ was summoned as a witness to prove the innocence of the jurist.
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