Colombia’s chief prosecutor is under fire again over his alleged abuse of power to bully critics of his long-time friend, President Ivan Duque, instead of fighting crime.
Some 60 political and judicial heavyweights sent a letter to Duque after Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa ordered the confiscation of properties belonging to Magdalena Governor Carlos Caicedo and former Mayor Rafael Martinez.
According to the leading politicians and judicial experts, Barbosa’s latest controversial move is “a new attack against those of us who think differently and who dispute the policies of the national government.”
“No criminal conduct can be inferred from the actions of the former mayors,” the politicians and jurists wrote the president.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is being used as a hammer against alternative governments and democratic personalities such as those who are now suffering this unjust outrage, and it is you, as Head of State and Head of Government, who must guarantee the freedoms and human rights of citizens.
Political leaders and jurists
The Magdalena governor pointed out that, according to the prosecution, he had bought his mom’s home in 1995 with money allegedly embezzled between 2015 and 2019.
It seems that the national level of government is interested in hindering the mandate and taking over the spaces that ought to be managed by the new administration of the Magdalena, without the traditional family clans that have misruled the department in recent years, leaving deep gaps of inequality, poverty, institutional precariousness and fiscal deterioration.
Political leaders and jurists
The letter of former acting Mayor of Bogota, Clara Lopez was signed by, among others, former Constitutional Court magistrates Alfredo Beltran, Jorge Ivan Palacio and Luis Ernesto Vargas, former Central Bank executive Salomon Kalmanovitz, former Nariño governor Camilo Romero and much of the congressional opposition.
The Prosecutor General justified confiscating the former mayors’ properties on the claim that only one of five hospitals they had been constructing was finished.
“A visit to the city is enough to corroborate that four of them were delivered and are currently in operation,” Caicedo said, adding that the properties were seized without the approval of a judge.
Barbosa has been under almost constant criticism for trumping up charges against government critics like Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez while neglecting and allegedly frustrating investigations into major corruption scandals like the Odebrecht bribery scandal and alleged election fraud in the 2018 elections.
