The keys to the trial that Álvaro Uribe faces for witness manipulation

The criminal process that has former President Álvaro Uribe in the dock has nuances worthy of a political drama: complainants who become denounced, power struggles, competing narratives and an outcome that is still uncertain. In 2010, at the end of his second presidential term, the current scenario was unthinkable. Uribe had approval levels of 80% after a mandate characterized by a frontal fight against the guerrillas and in which his greatest shadow arose, the scandal of thousands of civilians murdered at the hands of the military and which is known as “false positives.” . Today, the reality is different. The left occupies the Casa de Nariño with Gustavo Petro, a long-time critic, and the now less popular former president faces a trial for three crimes and events that occurred when he was no longer president. These are the keys to the process that has a former Colombian president in a criminal trial for the first time in more than half a century.

From complainant before the Supreme Court to accused by the Prosecutor’s Office

The first precedent of the case dates back to February 2012, when Uribe denounced the leftist politician Iván Cepeda, then representative to the Chamber for the Democratic Pole, before the Supreme Court of Justice. According to the former president, Cepeda had visited several detention centers to form a “cartel of false witnesses” against him, offering them benefits in exchange for falsely linking him to paramilitary groups. The case remained quiet until, in September 2014, Cepeda held a debate in Congress against Uribe, who He had taken office as senator of the Democratic Center only months before. There he mentioned that he had in his possession testimonies that involved the former president with the creation of the Metro Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Uribe’s response was immediate. He left the Capitol, crossed the Plaza de Bolívar and arrived at the Palace of Justice. There he expanded on the 2012 complaint.

The reversal that would come four years later would take the entire country by surprise. In February 2018, the Court announced that it was shelving the action presented by Uribe and, at the same time, that it was opening an investigation into the former president after concluding that there were indications that it was he—and not Cepeda—who was trying to distort the testimony of former paramilitaries. . The evidence collected, including telephone interceptions, indicated that the former president participated “in the design and execution of a plan aimed at diverting the attention of justice” from the accusations against him and holding Cepeda responsible for crimes. The investigation would be for the crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud.

In August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the same Court increased the tension: it ordered the preventive detention of Uribe, arguing that it could hinder judicial investigations if he remained free. The Uribista right accused the magistrates of political persecution, the left celebrated the determination. Uribe, on the advice of his lawyers, resigned from the Senate and thus stopped being impeached. His judicial case then became the responsibility of the Attorney General’s Office, led since the beginning of that year by Francisco Barbosa. The bet of the leader of the Democratic Center was to obtain more favorable treatment, since Barbosa was the best friend from university studies of the president of the time, the Uribista Iván Duque, who nominated him for the position. The logic was simple. Uribe expected benevolence from the friend of his pupil. And he was right.

Over the next few years, Barbosa assigned the case to several of his subordinates. First to Gabriel Jaimes, who asked a judge to allow him to preclude (close) the case, alleging that there were not sufficient reasons to accuse Uribe of a crime. He was not successful. His replacement, Javier Cárdenas, failed in the same attempt. Two other prosecutors were in charge, but they left the case without taking any action. Last January, with two months left before Barbosa completed his term in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office, the file landed in Gilberto Villarreal’s office. Unlike his colleagues and predecessors, the jurist defined that he would take Uribe to trial and added a third crime, that of bribery, to the accusation.

A procedural fraud and two different bribes

Villarreal formally accused Uribe of three different crimes: bribery in criminal proceedings, procedural fraud and bribery. He did it for events that occurred between 2017 and 2018. The lawyer Diego Cadena participated in all of them, who acted under orders from Uribe, in charge of contacting former paramilitaries and who therefore faces his own judicial process. The evidentiary discussion is whether he offered them illegal benefits in exchange for giving favorable testimonies to the former president, and whether he did so with his approval. The Prosecutor’s Office says yes to both questions. “Dr. Uribe Vélez determined the lawyer Diego Javier Cadena Ramírez to directly or through an intermediary, deliver and/or promise money or other benefits to selected witnesses of criminal acts, so that they would not tell the truth or keep it completely or partially silent in the referred to criminal proceedings,” reads the indictment presented by the prosecutor.

The first former paramilitary that Cadena contacted was Carlos Enrique Vélez, alias Victor, in July 2017. The lawyer offered him perks to sign a letter addressed to the Supreme Court in which he denied his former boss in the AUC, Pablo Hernán Sierra, who had assured that Uribe helped found the Metro Block. The text of the letter also referred to an alleged meeting with Cepeda, in which the congressman promised him protection and other gifts. The letter, with Vélez’s signature, was one of the documents that Uribe attached to the 2012 complaint against Cepeda. When the Court filed that complaint and opened an investigation into the former president, Cadena looked for Vélez again, asking him to write a new document. Vélez agreed and two more former paramilitaries, Jhon Jaime Cárdenas, alias Phosphoriteand Fauner José Barahona, alias Racumin, They also signed. In the criminal proceedings against Cadena, Vélez has admitted that they were false statements and that several of his relatives received money as payment for his false testimony.

The other former paramilitary involved is the star witness Juan Guillermo Monsalve, convicted of kidnapping. In February 2018, while he was being held in La Picota prison in Bogotá, Monsalve was approached to retract his previous statements in which he stated that the Metro Block was created on property owned by the former president’s family. He received text messages from his friend Carlos Eduardo López, alias Caliche; pressure from his cellmate, Enrique Pardo Hasche; and he met with Cadena. In all of these approaches, they asked him to record a video and sign documents denying his accusation, in addition to blaming Cepeda for being behind a plot to link the former president with paramilitarism. “In exchange for this fallacious statement, Cadena, with the authorization of Dr. Álvaro Uribe, and without charging him fees, promised Monsalve to initiate a review action for a criminal process that had been brought against him, better conditions in his detention, and “If he publicly requested security for himself and his family, they would support his request before the competent authority,” the indictment explains.

Monsalve agreed to write a letter. Under Pardo’s gu
idance, he wrote a letter apologizing to the former president and expressing his regret. He gave it to his wife, Deyanira Gómez, but not before clarifying at the end of the document that “those statements had been made due to the pressure exerted on him by Messrs. Cadena and Pardo Hasche, sent by the former president.” Gómez filed the letter in court.

The presentation of documents that were untrue and misled the magistrates, as well as the offer of money and other benefits to witnesses, are the reasons why the Prosecutor’s Office charges Uribe with the crimes of procedural fraud and bribery in action. penal. The new crime of bribery, added by prosecutor Villarreal, was established after Cadena contacted Hilda Niño, a former prosecutor convicted of corruption, and promised to guarantee her benefits in exchange for indicting former attorney general Eduardo Montealegre and the former deputy attorney general. Jorge Perdomo, who led the institution between 2012 and 2016, of acting illicitly to link Santiago Uribe (brother of the former president) with paramilitary groups. Niño worked in the Prosecutor’s Office under the subordination of Montealegre and Perdomo, so the complaint made sense.

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