Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has frozen real estate and cattle worth $3 million that according to demobilized guerrilla group FARC was part of their illegal assets.
According to the prosecution, the assets belonged to Jaime Cutiva, who had been reported by the guerrillas’ former Teofilo Forero unit as one of their business associates.
Following a peace deal with the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos in November last year, the FARC is supposed to give up on the assets obtained during the group’s 52-year war with the state.
Local media said that among the assets were hotels and shopping centers in the capital Bogota, the country’s third largest city Cali, and the cities of San Vicente del Caguan and Tulua.
In the rural part of San Vicente del Caguan, the prosecution and the military also seized more than 400 pieces of cattle also alleged to be part of the FARC’s assets.
The guerrillas’ alleged associate was accused of using the assets to launder drug money obtained by the guerrilla unit’s former involvement in the international cocaine trade.
According to the prosecution, the suspected frontman denied the money belonged to the FARC, but he had been able to make the investments after money literally had fallen from the sky inside an airplane that crashed on his property.
If proven that the money belonged to the FARC, the prosecution would proceed to formally seize the assets and make them available for the reparation of victims.
Cutiva and his family will be investigated for illicit enrichment and money laundering.
It is unclear how much the FARC has in assets as guerrillas are only just cooperating with justice to surrender their assets after more than 30 years of involvement in the drug trade.
The Teofilo Forero column was one of the FARC’s most feared fighter units that was mainly active in Caqueta, a province in the south of Colombia.