Colombia’s former top financial crimes prosecutor was arrested for her alleged involvement in the extortion of drug trafficking suspects.
The prosecution’s former financial crimes chief, Ana Catalina Noguera, was arrested on corruption charges together with a colonel and two other members of the National Police’s international cooperation unit.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the officials tracked down alleged drug traffickers and demanded money to obstruct their extradition to other countries.
Noguera is a confidant of former Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martinez, who made her head of the Asset Forfeiture department a few weeks before former President Ivan Duque took office in 2018.
Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa made Noguera his Financial Crimes chief after taking office in early 2020.
The father of the arrested former prosecution chief is the former rector of the Sergio Arboleda University where Barbosa and Duque got their law degrees.
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Noguera resigned in November 2020 after American prosecutors indicted two of her cousins on drug trafficking charges.
The former prosecution chief hit the news again in April last year when W Radio published audio in which the former prosecutor told a colleague that pending corruption charges against a wealthy Bogota family threatened Martinez’s efforts to cover up his possibly criminal involvement in the bribery practices of Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht.
Ana Catalina Noguera
Around the same time, Noguera was accused of editing a testimony in which Deputy Prosecutor General Martha Mancera was accused of being involved in criminal activity, according to leaked prosecution documents obtained by newspaper El Espectador.
The former Financial Crimes chief is the third ally of Martinez in serious trouble with the law.
In 2017, a DEA investigation led to the conviction of his former anti-corruption chief, Luis Gustavo Moreno, for mediating bribes on behalf of convicted former Supreme Court justices.
Colombia’s anti-corruption chief arrested on US bribery charges
In December last year, another one of Martinez’s most trusted lackeys, prosecutor Daniel Hernandez, was charged with corruption over his alleged attempts to sabotage investigations into the Odebrecht scandal.
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Congress is in charge of multiple criminal investigations against the former prosecutor general over his alleged role in the Odebrecht scandal and the fabrication of drug trafficking charges against former FARC commanders.