Almost three months after journalist Gonzalo Guillen revealed evidence that Colombia’s’ruling party and drug traffickers plotted to rig the 2018 elections, only the cops who discovered the alleged fraud are in jail.
In an interview with Semana, the senior journalist said the jailing of the policemen was meant prevent the exposure of ties between Duque’s far-right Democratic Center party and the drug trafficking organization of Marquitos Figueroa, a scandal popularly known as “Ñeñepolitica.”
Gonzalo Guillen
Chief prosecutor Francisco Barbosa, a long-time friend of the president, has embarked on a “witch hunt” and is making sure nobody at the Prosecutor General’s Office’s investigates the case, according to Guillen.
The missing evidence
The journalist added that Barbosa is concealing wiretap recordings of conversations between Duque’s party and the narcos before the allegedly fraudulent election in June 2018 and after the president’s inauguration in August that year.
According to attorney Miguel Angel del Rio, who stumbled upon the fraud, this batch of recordings is the “most important” because it would prove not just the conspiracy between Duque’s party and the narcos, but the effective committing of the alleged election fraud.
Additionally, said the attorney, these recordings would prove that the prosecution also conspired with the drug trafficking organization to frustrate the investigation into the murder of the son of his client, a tailor from the city of Barranquilla.
Alleged cover-up likely successful
Del Rio successfully got a court order to release this evidence, but neither the attorney nor the journalist believe the prosecution will release the wiretap recordings of Figueroa’s late money launderer, Jose Guillermo Hernandez, a.k.a “El Ñeñe.”
Journalist Gonzalo Guillen
Barbosa’s questionable behavior in the investigation is not just affecting the criminal investigation into the former personal assistant of former President Alvaro Uribe, who maintained contact with the narcos.
The prosecution’s alleged destruction of evidence also affects the congressional investigation into the president’s alleged participation in the fraud and the Supreme Court investigation into Uribe, Duque’s patron.