The president's younger brother, Juan Fernando Petro, is questioned from time to time for his participation in meetings with politicians or mafia members that leave a bad taste. The last of these meetings took place last Monday in the city of Medellín, where he met in a restaurant with eleven mayors of small municipalities on the north coast of the country – all from the area called Urabá Antioqueño. Petro Hermano did not want it to be a meeting that would appear in the press, and when the journalist from the media company IFM Noticias found him there, Juan Fernando asked them to take away his cell phone. “No photo can come out of here,” said the president’s brother, as the branch manager later recounted. The photo came out. Also the information that was talked about. Juan Fernando Petro, who is not a civil servant, listened to the mayors talk about education, health or peace and promised to convey his concerns to the president. The mayors told La Silla Vacía that they had already tried to communicate with the president through other institutional channels, but when that didn't work, they looked for the younger brother.
“Who would you like to send a reason to? To your mother, your father or your brother,” one of them told them. The family sometimes works better than the state.
When the meeting came to light, the brother began answering questions. Why was he there? Is he the president's messenger? “If traveling around the communities is a crime, then they should put me in prison,” he replied to Caracol Radio, confirming that he had no official role in the government to act as a messenger. His goal, he says, is to get closer to communities to understand their concerns and convey them to “someone” with power. “I am not the institution, I am not the government, but it is about a Berraco minister, a governor, a deputy, someone who cares about what is happening there,” he said.
The president's brother is known in public opinion not so much for his work as an activist – he worked for the NGO Latin American Commission on Human Rights – but for his controversial meetings. In April 2022, when Gustavo Petro was still a candidate, Caracol Noticias announced that Juan Fernando had entered La Picota prison to meet with convicted politicians (for corruption or murder) who wanted to join the future president's peace program . Gustavo Petro then defended his brother and said it was just a possible “social forgiveness”. Months later, Petro won the presidency.
The following year, in 2023, new meeting or meetings. It has been reported in several media outlets that Juan Fernando Petro offered prison services to drug traffickers in exchange for money. Univision revealed that it had offered amnesty to a drug trafficker to avoid extradition. to the United States in exchange for thousands of dollars. At that moment, the president sent an even worse message to his brother: he asked prosecutors to investigate him.
“My commitment to Colombia and Colombians is to achieve peace, and anyone who wants to interfere with this goal or take personal advantage of it has no place in government, even if they are members of my family,” the president wrote in a letter letter. public. The brother didn't like the news at all. “He decides to subject his people to this public ridicule, which undoubtedly exceeds the limits of the purely fraternal, in order to make us the target of slanderous attacks,” replied Juan Fernando. Shortly afterwards he said on television that President Petro had Asperger's. The president distanced himself again. “Something happened to my brother. “I was never diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome,” the president clarified.
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But every now and then another meeting happens. Cambio magazine revealed in early February that Juan Fernando Petro attended a meeting with senior officials at the Family Welfare Institute in 2022 to determine contracts that would benefit a councilor being questioned. Diana López Zuleta, a journalist and contributor to this newspaper, said last year that Juan Fernando got married in 2020 and that among those present at the ceremony was the wife of a famous politician, Kiko Gómez, who was convicted of murder. “The friendship between the president's brother and the wife of a criminal is not a crime, but it is questionable whether it creates any benefits for the convicted person,” Zuleta wrote. Gómez received very suspicious benefits for moving a prison from Bogotá to Barranquilla.
“In this country everything is suspicion,” the brother told Caracol Radio, defending himself against suspicion related to the last meeting with the eleven mayors of Urabá Antioqueño. But it's not just suspicion. There are a few.
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