At least two US federal prosecutors have opened preliminary investigations into Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Friday.
According to the US newspaper, the criminal investigations were being conducted by the US attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and would be supported by agents of Homeland Security Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The investigations have been trying to establish, among other things, if Petro has met with drug traffickers and if his campaign sought mafia campaign donations, three anonymous sources told the NYT.
The investigations would be in their early stages, according to the US newspaper.
It is unclear if the investigations will result in criminal charges, the NYT added.
News agency Associated Press, which was apparently also contacted by the prosecutors, reported that one investigation followed “allegations that representatives of Petro solicited bribes from drug traffickers at the Colombian jail La Picota in exchange for a promise that they not be extradited to the US.”
The criminal investigations followed unsubstantiated claims of US President Donald Trump, who called his Colombian counterpart a “drug trafficking leader” amid tensions over the US involvement in the Gaza genocide and US air strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The Trump administration subsequently put Petro on a blacklist for drug traffickers, claiming that the Colombian president “has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity” without any evidence.
Petro has arguably been the most active Colombian politician when it comes to fighting the influence of organized crime in his country’s politics.
In response to allegations made by the president when he was a senator, more than 80 congressmen and governors were sent to prison because of their ties to paramilitary groups that controlled Colombia’s cocaine exports at the time.
The Truth Commission that was set up as part of a peace process with the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC confirmed that these paramilitary organizations and their drug trafficking associates worked together with US intelligence agencies like the CIA and the DEA.
The Trump administration has tried to undermine the war crimes tribunal that came with the peace process since taking office for the first time in 2017.
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