Recordings — transcripts of which were published by weekly Cambio Thursday — imply closer ties between suspected money launderer DMG and Colombia’s Press Secretary Cesar Mauricio Velasquez and presidential adviser Felix Alfazar.
Both high Government officials were linked to the company last year when Velasquez was forced to admit he met with DMG director David Murcia in the presidential palace and Alfazar’s name had appeared on tickets for an event that DMG organized for mayors and governors in Bogotá.
The published transcripts show that a personal friend of Velásquez, Óscar Iván Palacio, was trying to set up a meeting between DMG executives and the Press Secretary in February 2008.
The good contacts existing between Palacio and the Presidency made it possible for former paramilitary spokesman and alleged member of the Office of Envigado, Antonio ‘Job’ López, to meet with Velasquez in the presidential palace in 2008. ‘Job’ was murdered in Medellín later that year.
In reaction to the publication, Velasquez denies having met DMG executives more than the previously admitted one time and says he asked the Prosecutor General to investigate if his friend Palacio has used his name only to incriminate him.
Presidential adviser Félix Alfazar was recorded when personally calling DMG attorney Margarita Pabon. In the transcript, Alfazar speaks of the possibility for municipalities to invest in DMG and to allow “a brother” to take part in the management of a DMG office in Medellín.
Alfazar was not asked for a reaction.
