Colombia’s Inspector General (IG) Monday announced the list of charges against President Alvaro Uribe’s personal secretary Bernardo Moreno for his role in the security agency DAS wiretapping scandal.
Presidential secretary Moreno is charged with “exceeding the limit of his powers,” following a meeting in his office with DAS officials on April 24, 2008, where he was given confidential information, the IG Alejandro Ordonez explained.
Moreno stated Monday that he has never infringed the law.
The charges will also affect the director of Colombia’s Financial Information and Analysis Unit, Mario Aranguren “who gave instructions to officials of the institution he headed to participate in the meeting on April 24, 2008, where the restricted information was supplied,” Ordonez explained.
Former DAS directors Jorge Noguera, Maria del Pilar Hurtado and Andres Penate will also have to answer to charges of wiretapping and illegal tailing of magistrates, politicians, journalists and trade unionists
Lists of charges will also be brought against DAS sub-director Jorge Narvaez and former DAS officials Jorge Lago, Fernando Tavares, and Carlos Alberto Arzayus.
The IG first began investigations into Moreno last May, after a former DAS counterintelligence director testified that the presidential secretary was involved in ordering the illegal wiretappings.
According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the country’s prosecutor general has so far opened criminal investigations against forty DAS officials and indicted another seven.