Colombia: Former presidential candidate charged for receiving campaign payments from Odebrecht

The Colombian Prosecutor’s Office charged this Monday several crimes, including illicit enrichment, to the former presidential candidate of Uribismo (right) Óscar Iván Zuluaga for receiving payments from the Brazilian company Odebrecht in the 2014 campaign, in which he lost in the second round against Juan Manuel Santos .

During the hearing to charge charges against the politician and his son, David Zuluagawho was his campaign manager, the prosecutor assured before the Supreme Court of Justice that Zuluaga would have accepted for his campaign in 2014 an illegal contribution of US$ 1.61 million from the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht.

The candidate of the Centro Democrático party would have agreed, according to the account of the Prosecutor’s Office, with the then representative of the company in Colombia, Eleuberto Antonio Martorellito pay that amount to the publicist José Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mendoça, known as “Duda” Mendoça, something that was never reported to the electoral authority.

Therefore, the prosecutor formulated against zuluaga two charges of falsifying a private document, three of procedural fraud and one of illicit enrichment of individuals; while the son is attributed an act of procedural fraud.

Neither of them accepted the charges.

Meetings with Odebrecht

According to the investigation of the Prosecutor’s Office, zuluaga -who repeated as Uribismo’s candidate in the last elections but withdrew before the first round- and members of his campaign would have met with former directors of the construction company in Sao Paulo and Bogotá.

“During the meetings, apparently, a contribution from the construction company was agreed to pay part of the professional services that the publicist José Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mendoça would provide to ‘Zuluaga President 2014-2018’”, alleged the Prosecutor’s Office in a statement.

Thus, the campaign disbursed US$1.64 million in Colombia for the publicist’s signature, while Odebrecht transferred US$1.61 million “from an account in Antigua and Barbuda, and with the intermediation of a bank in Geneva (Switzerland), he made a company that ‘Duda’ Mendoça had in Panama”.

“In this way, the fees of the Brazilian adviser were covered”, added the Prosecutor’s Office.

This payment would violate the Constitution that prohibits political parties from receiving financing from foreign natural or legal persons for electoral campaigns.

“The evidence shows that Oscar Ivan Zuluaga was aware of the illegal contribution and submitted to the electoral authority the first and second round income and expense reports without including Odebrecht’s contributions. Thus, he obtained a replacement of votes for more than 25,291 million pesos (almost US $6.2 million).”, specified the Prosecutor’s Office.

The case returned to public scrutiny, despite the fact that the uribista has repeatedly denied the illegal financing of his campaign because Semana magazine published two audio recordings of Zuluaga’s conversations with Daniel García Arizabaleta, a member of the Democratic Center, a week ago, in which the entry of illegal money into the campaign is mentioned.

After the disclosure of these conversations, fellow zuluaga in the Democratic Center they have rejected the alleged illegal financing.

“We have bewilderment and sadness”, assured Senator Paloma Valencia.

Source: EFE