Colombian businesswoman Lopez, alias “La ,” (The Cat) who was sentenced to nine years for her ties to paramilitaries, was caught traveling between towns while she was supposedly being held in a hospital, newspaper El Tiempo reported Tuesday.
La Gata, who made her fortune in the Colombian lottery, was in the hospital due to her frail health when she received her sentence. She was meant to be held at a hospital while her lawyer appealed her sentence and sought house arrest because of her health, but the police apprehended her entering the town of Magangue in the department of Bolivar on the Caribbean coast.
Prosecutors have have begun investigations to find out why the businesswoman was moving freely through the area when she had been sentenced to nine years in prison.
Judicial investigations include an inspection of the hospital where she was being treated and interviews with doctors to determine her real state of health. The prosecution is also interviewing the judge who gave La Gata her sentence, Luz Marina Alvarez Alfonso, and the businesswoman’s defenders who apparently granted her permission to move between the hospital in Barranquilla, her daughter’s birthday party in Magangue, and Cartagena.
La Gata’s colleagues pointed out that she had not been officially notified of the conviction and that the sentence is suspended by the appeal of the court’s decision, which is waiting to be resolved in the Superior Court of Bogota.
On February 1, 2011, the Colombian businesswoman was convicted of conspiracy for her links to paramilitary groups between 2000 and 2003.