Álvaro Uribe, in Bogotá, on August 10, 2023.NurPhoto (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The judiciary has reiterated that the case against former President Álvaro Uribe for witness tampering and procedural fraud should not be dropped. Bogota’s Supreme Court has rejected the request of prosecutors who insisted for the third time that there was insufficient material to bring the former president to justice. The judges considered that the prosecuting body should have carried out more investigative measures and that the uncertainty about some facts was “so great” that the request for exclusion could not be granted. “The prosecution’s arguments are not strong enough to grant the request,” said this Friday the judge Carlos Andrés Guzmán, in charge of reading the court decision.
The case dates back to 2012, when Uribe filed a complaint in the Supreme Court against Senator Iván Cepeda over an alleged conspiracy using false witnesses in prisons to implicate him in paramilitarism. In 2018, the Supreme Court changed the case: it refrained from prosecuting Cepeda and instead opened a case against Uribe on suspicion that he and his lawyers manipulated witnesses in order to get them to withdraw the allegations against him , who pressured her to denigrate Uribe. The congressman, close to President Gustavo Petro, was present at the hearing this Friday as a victim.
At the center of the trial is one of the former president’s lawyers, Diego Cadena, who is being investigated by prosecutors in the same case. Cadena allegedly offered former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve legal benefits to change his statement about Uribe’s closeness to paramilitary groups. For his part, Carlos Enrique Vélez, alias Víctor, said that Cadena offered him money in return for testifying against Cepeda. Álvaro Uribe’s defense, led by Jaime Granados, claims that the former president had nothing to do with Cadena’s actions.
Justice believes there is still no certainty about how some meetings between Cadena and Monsalve in February 2018 came about. “It is not clear whether it was Monsalve who tried to be contacted by someone close to Uribe.” Or if Uribe, through Cadena, had such an initiative,” said Judge Guzmán. Likewise, the judges referred to some recordings that Monsalve made during the meetings with a spy watch and which his wife had submitted to the Supreme Court. “It was not ruled out that the witness Monsalve had a useful document or promise for his testimony,” Guzmán added.
The prosecution’s insistence
The former president resigned his Senate seat in 2020 to prevent the Supreme Court from investigating him. The file was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office led by Francisco Barbosa, who turned the case into an endless trial focused on archiving. The accusing body repeatedly failed in its motions to exclude, arguing that Monsalve and Vélez were not credible and that their statements had not been adequately collected. The latest development in the case occurred in May, when the 41st criminal judge of the Bogotá district denied the possibility of excluding the investigation.
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Uribe, who decided to withdraw from Friday’s hearing, had assured Thursday afternoon that he would be brought to trial. “I certainly take the news with concern. “I have defended my reputation vigorously, but I do not know how to bribe witnesses or deceive the court,” he said on X – formerly Twitter. The information was based on an article in the magazine Semana, which indicated that the prosecutor’s office would file the charges this Friday. Although the court has not yet finished reading its decision, Semana assured during the hearing that the company will not press charges for now and will opt to appoint a new prosecutor in the case.
Information in development.
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