Plagiarism is intellectual fraud. Reporting creates moral, administrative and legal consequences for both the plagiarist and the complainant; when this crime is caught in the hands of politics, in the name of public surveillance, its consequences must not and cannot remain just media noise, as a nuisance without content and form, because by denouncing it, the perpetrator of the crime or the applicant, who harms the dignity of the denounced person, is executed.

The right to intellectual property includes copyright, understood as the standard of protection of intellectual effort. Plagiarism is the voluntary and knowing full or partial appropriation of an intellectual creation without any recognition, which leads to the deception of third parties. In the academic field, plagiarism is a violation of the integrity of an educational institution that violates the ethical principles of truth, honesty and justice, the fundamental pillars of educational and professional activity. Faced with a complaint of plagiarism, the academic institution has the responsibility and obligation to conduct an investigation that goes beyond the application of software and integrates disciplines such as documentoscopy, graphoscopy, linguistic analysis and hermeneutics, which will give credibility to the final opinion; and which in turn will allow the level of civil or criminal sanction to be defined. However, if this final judgment does not identify evidence of significant plagiarism, this would constitute a violation of the right to personal dignity of the person reported; insulting his character, honor and reputation, which requires sanction and compensation.

Diana Salazar asks the Constitutional Court to monitor the actions of members of the Council for Citizen Participation who would try to “review” their appointment

fierce pursuit

Like any complaint with moral, civil or criminal consequences, plagiarism has its own channel of investigation and prosecution.: judicial system. Failure to comply with the due process makes it difficult and delays the legal conclusion of the presented accusation. In the face of an academic plagiarism complaint against current Attorney General Diana Salazar, it is important to note that the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control, which appointed the official under investigation, is not the competent authority to conduct the investigation. or analyze the commission of an alleged criminal act, such as plagiarism, whose affectation attacks the reputation of the author and his work. Furthermore, a strictly academic subject should not be used for political or even private purposes, because it violates the objectivity and transparency that define academic integrity, reducing it to an object of intellectual scandal, which remains in the political discourse without consequences or responsibility.

Since plagiarism is a socially and legally condemned fact, when it comes to public officials, both the defendant and the plaintiff must adhere to academic opinion and court judgment; assume their moral responsibility before civil society and at least renounce their institutional position, which is a consequence that will not cease to be the desire of a society in the face of actions that delegitimize the rule of law, due process, academic integrity and public reputation. (OR)