University denounces that the president of the Colombian House of Representatives plagiarized her master’s thesis

The Externado University of Colombia assured Monday that the president of the House of Representatives, Jennifer Arias, belonging to the Uribe party Democratic Center, plagiarized part of her master’s thesis.

“The University submitted the text of the thesis to a computer tool to detect plagiarism, an operation that yielded a significant number of coincidences with sources or documents published on the Internet by authors other than Arias Falla and (Leydy Lucia) Largo Alvarado ( the co-author of the thesis) “, indicates a statement from the Bogota University.

On October 30, an investigative article in the newspaper El Espectador collected some complaints on the Plagiarism SOS portal, where a group of researchers analyzed several pages of the congresswoman’s thesis, entitled “The OCAD and their contradiction with the theories of rational choice ”and found that there was“ plagiarism of three different documents ”.

The University began the investigation after these complaints were known and after the discoveries of the plagiarism detection tool, they hired an expert in copyright and intellectual property “to clarify a possible plagiarism”.

“In all the five cases mentioned, it became clear that the necessary elements for the existence of an infringement of copyright, consisting of the reproduction or copy of original and protected elements, concur,” concluded the expert.

In addition, he reported several servile plagiarisms or “deliberately paraphrased where a simple reading is enough to deduce the way in which such fragments arrived at the analyzed degree work”.

Arias and Largo (who also has a position in the House of Representatives) published the thesis in 2016 as a requirement to obtain a master’s degree in Government and Public Policy at this renowned university, which was directed by Professor Manuel Calderón Ramírez, that he is no longer a teacher at this institution.

The co-authors sent copies of the thesis to the university, stating that it was the “final and definitive version” of their final master’s thesis, but that “it does not fully coincide with the one sent by the thesis supervisor as the final project. “as reported by the university today.

Possible legal actions

The University asked the State Council to annul the titles of the authors “and sent the pertinent documentation to the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and to the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation, for the corresponding”.

But by itself it is not going to start disciplinary proceedings “due to lack of competence” as the authors have been without being students for more than five years and that is why it cannot revoke the titles.

The president of the Chamber, elected to this position last July, has denied the allegations in recent weeks and after hearing the conclusion of the university on Monday, she reiterated her innocence.

“With the tranquility of always acting under the precepts of the Law, I declare that I have NOT committed any plagiarism,” said the parliamentarian on her Twitter account.

In addition, he asked the Externado “to comply with due process” and “allow him to exercise the right of contradiction.” “The judicial authorities will clarify these facts,” said Arias.

Supreme Court opened an inquiry against Arias

This Tuesday the Instruction Room of the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia opened a preliminary investigation to the president of the House of Representatives, Jennifer Arias, for the plagiarism of her master’s thesis at the Externado de Colombia University.

According to Diario El Tiempo, this type of act can be punished with a prison sentence of 23 to 90 months, according to article 270 of the Colombian Penal Code. (I)