Colombia’s chief prosecutor said on Sunday that he has formally included the government’s ambassador in Uruguay in a drug trafficking investigation.
In an interview with newspaper El Tiempo, Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa said that Ambassador Fernando Sanclemente has formally been tied to the investigation into the cocaine laboratory found on one of his families’ properties.
“In this prosecution there exists no privilege,” Barbosa said two months after US investigators tracked cocaine found on American airports to the lab on Sanclemente’s estate in Guasca, close to the capital Bogota.
Colombia’s ambassador to Uruguay returns over cocaine labs found on family estate
The chief prosecutor told El Tiempo that the ambassador will have to explain how a cocaine lab could be producing at least one ton of cocaine per month on his family’s property without his knowledge.
Dynasty politician Sanclemente has stressed his family’s “impeccable public image” despite already being investigated for corruption and accusations he took bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel when he was the director of Colombia’s civil aviation authority.
The prosecution’s tardiness in investigating Sanclemente further increased doubts about Barbosa’s integrity, who is already implicated in an election fraud plot between drug traffickers and the party of President Ivan Duque.
Colombia’s chief prosecutor implicated in plot to rig Duque’s 2018 election
Like the investigation against the ruling Democratic Center party, the investigation against the ambassador has been marred by irregularities.
Media were initially told that the lab was an “express lab,” which was later denied by the prosecution, which said the lab had been producing cocaine meant for the US for months.
Sanclemente told press that his brother, who managed the property, had rented the area where the lab was found to an 87 year old potato farmer who has yet to appear.
The ambassador’s brother has also not appeared in public.
Who have appeared are five defense attorneys, which is quite a lot for the ambassador who claims to be a victim of the drug traffickers operating a lab on his property.