Colombia’s defense minister personally handled the repatriation of the body of the money launder who allegedly helped President Ivan Duque win the 2018 presidential election, La Nueva Prensa reported on Monday.
Two sources close to Jose Guillermo Hernandez, a.k.a “El Ñeñe, told the news website that Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, was “key” in repatriating the late money launderer of the drug trafficking organization of Marquitos Figueroa from Brazil in three days when Trujilllo was foreign minister.
This process usually takes at least a month, Foreign Ministry sources told La Nueva Prensa.
However, “we were able to talk to the foreign minister and they helped us a lot from the beginning,” the cousin of El Ñeñe, Juan David Hernandez reportedly said.
This was confirmed by another source close to the money launderer who conspired with Duque’s far-right Democratic Center party to rig the 2018 elections.
Carlos Holmes was the key for El Ñeñe. If you want to know, look at the difference between the dates when he was killed and when he was buried. No dead man is brought so quickly to Colombia. Who was the foreign minister? Well, Carlos Holmes, that guy was the one who accelerated everything.
Anonymous source
El Ñeñe was murdered in an alleged robbery in the Brazilian city of Uberaba on May 1, last year. Three days later, the body was returned to Valledupar, where the late money launderer lived. The funeral was on May 5, according to La Nueva Prensa.
Trujillo left the Foreign Ministry in November last year to replace Guillermo Botero, who was forced to resign over a scandal that erupted about the death of at least eight minors in a bombing that also killed a dissident leader of demobilized guerrilla group FARC.
According to wiretap transcripts from November 2018 released by Caracol Radio, El Ñeñe said his cousin knew the defense minister.
Trujillo is one of the closest allies of Duque’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe, who is currently under house arrest on charges he tried to manipulate witnesses to conceal his family’s ties to paramilitary groups in the 1990’s.
Duque, Uribe and multiple members of their party are being investigated for their alleged involvement in the conspiracy to rig the 2018 elections in favor of the president.
