Laura Sarabia was integrated this Friday (23) as the right-hand man of the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, when she was sworn in as director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre), seven months after her resignation.
Sarabia, one of Petro's most trusted people, thus returns to Casa de Nariño (presidency headquarters) in a position of even more power than the one he occupied when he was chief of staff – a role that no longer exists – and acted as link between the president and ministers and communicated the lines of action to them.
She will replace Carlos Ramón González, who was also sworn in this Friday as head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI).
This is not Sarabia's official return to government, as she had already been sworn in in September as director of the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS), a ministerial-level entity that manages a large budget.
“Several of us already know each other and work in the government in other roles,” Petro said at Sarabia's inauguration, without mentioning her directly and referring only to the other positions in other entities that were also sworn in today.
The scandal involving Sarabia
When he was Petro's chief of staff, Sarabia's name began to be tarnished after the Colombian magazine Week published a report stating that a nanny, identified as Marelbys Meza, was accused in January of last year of stealing a briefcase from her home that allegedly contained US$7,000.
After the alleged theft of the money, the phone numbers of the nanny and the other employee were illegally intercepted by the police, using as a cover an investigation against the Clan do Golfo criminal group in the department of Chocó, in the west of the country.
In addition, Meza was taken to a unit at Casa de Nariño, to be interrogated and subjected to polygraph tests without a court order.
This accusation weakened Sarabia's position in the government and, on June 2, she resigned almost simultaneously with Armando Benedetti, then ambassador to Venezuela, who was her boss when he was a senator and she was his advisor.
After the theft became known, messages from Benedetti to Sarabia were leaked, in which he treated her in a rude and derogatory manner and pressured her to obtain a more important position, threatening to reveal alleged illegal financing of Petro's campaign, in other facts that are also being investigated.
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