Petro requests the resignation of two senior officials of the Presidency due to the corruption scandal of the La Guajira tank trucks

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has asked this Friday for the resignation of his advisor for the regions, Sandra Ortiz, and his secretary of Transparency, Andrés Idárraga, accused of events linked to the corruption case in which the Unit for the Management of Disaster Risk (UNGRD) purchased some tank trucks with extra costs to provide water to La Guajira. The decision is made while the legal situation of both officials is clarified. In a speech in Palermo (Huila), the president said: “Those officials, about whom I cannot carry out judicial proceedings, must be removed based on the evidence provided by the investigations carried out by the press or by us or by the justice system.”

A confession by Sneyder Pinilla, former deputy director of the UNGRD, has implicated Ortiz in the plot, which also precipitated the resignation of his boss Olmedo López from the direction of the entity. According to Pinilla’s story, revealed by the magazine Week and confirmed by the former official in other media, he himself gave 3,000 million pesos to Ortiz so that she could give them to the president of the Senate, Iván Name. The objective, Pinilla points out, is for the Green Party politician to help push forward in Congress the reforms promoted by the Petro Government. According to the complaint, the president of the House of Representatives, Andrés Calle, received another 1,000 million for the same purpose, directly from Pinilla. The complainant seeks to collaborate with justice, since he himself is investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office, in exchange for obtaining judicial benefits.

Idárraga, for his part, has been accused by López of the crime of influence peddling, for allegedly seeking benefits for some mayors, this Friday. In the morning the president announced the creation of a transparency table to address the scandal, and López attacked the possibility that the person in charge of the fight against corruption in the Presidency was on it. Idárraga responded by recalling that the Secretariat that he headed announced that it would criminally denounce López for the corruption plot. “Faced with this fact, those investigated and his defense respond with false accusations, showing his interest in seeking media distractions and muddying my good name, instead of standing up for justice,” he wrote this Friday.

Also this Friday, Ortiz issued a brief statement in which she rejects the accusations that link her to the plot. “At the time I will present the respective actions to protect my honor and good name.” Next, she regrets that there is an attempt to “judicially and politically instrumentalize the Attorney General’s Office” with the objective, according to her, of diverting attention from those truly involved in the events, who, in her opinion, can “obtain benefits.” through a principle of opportunity.

The case of corruption involving the La Guajira tank trucks began to be known last February, when it was learned that the 40 vehicles that had been acquired by the UNGRD to provide water to various areas of that department, traditionally affected by the scarcity of the resource , they were not fulfilling their function. First, López assured that the cars were being adapted with pumps and hoses before going into operation. However, it was later revealed that there were enormous cost overruns of more than 20,000 million pesos (more than five million dollars) in the contract, which, in addition, had been awarded to a company with no experience, dedicated to importing and exporting groceries. and canned. His replacement at UNGRD, Carlos Carrillo, has revealed more irregularities.

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