Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said that the firm in charge of the logistics of Colombia’s upcoming presidential elections of negotiating fraud with far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
In a post on social media platform X, Petro said Saturday that “intelligence reports” detailed “conversations between the Bautista brothers and de La Espriella, in which they discussed returning the passport contract to them in exchange for certain algorithms that would secure the presidency for de La Espriella.”
The two Bautista brothers are convicted fraudsters and the owners of Thomas Greg & Sons, the company that has been in charge of the logistics of elections for years and until recently the printing of Colombians’ passports.
In an apparent attempt to validate the president’s claim, a Twitter account that regularly publishes conveniently leaked intelligence reports published a declassified document in which intelligence agency DNI confirmed receiving an anonymous fraud complaint.
According to this complaint, De la Espriella and the Bautistas would have a “close relationship” and may be “orchestrating electoral fraud in the vote-counting records within the regionally outsourced software… and that, thanks to algorithms, they can manipulate the vote tally, altering and inflating the total number of votes for candidate De la Espriella in his favor.”
The document provided no evidence to confirm the anonymous complaint or the allegation made by Petro, whose post infuriated the far-right candidate.
“I don’t know the Bautista brothers, and if you have recordings of me, I challenge you to show them,” said De la Espriella in an initial response.
The candidate’s lawyers said that they would file criminal charges against the president before the House of Representatives’ Accusations Committee.
De la Espriella is one of two right-wing rivals of the leftist frontrunner in the election race that could make it to a run-off vote in June.
The other candidate, Senator Paloma Valencia, accused Petro of abusing his power to manipulate voters.
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