Two prosecutors accused Colombia’s deputy chief prosecutor of protecting corrupt officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking.
The accusation comes less than a year after jailed drug trafficker Carlos Ramon Zapata, a.k.a. “El Medico,” told prosecutors that Mancera “helped a lot of people” in the city of Cali.
The deputy chief prosecutor has been accused of protecting corrupt prosecution and security officials with ties to drug traffickers from the Valle del Cauca province in 2021.
The latest accusation
According to two agents of the prosecution’s Technical Investigations Unit (CTI), Mancera blocked an investigation into the allegedly corrupt director of the CTI in Buenaventura, Francisco Martinez.
The agents told W Radio that Buenaventura’s CTI director had ties to organized crime and was involved in organized crime activity, including drug trafficking.
Instead of investigating Martinez’s alleged involvement in organized crime, Mancera ordered to prosecute the whistleblowers, they told W Radio.
The deputy chief prosecutor refused to respond to the accusations, claiming this is part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Martinez did not respond to requests for comment, according to W Radio.
The problem with Cali
The latest accusations against Mancera confirm allegations made in a letter by anonymous judicial workers from Cali in July of 2021 and El Medico in December last year.
In their open letter to the prosecutor general, the anonymous judicial workers revealed images of Mancera with “narcoprosecutors” Ana Victoria Nieto and Ivan Aguirre, two personal friends of Barbosa’s deputy.
This was confirmed by jailed mafia lawyer Ruth Garcia, who told prosecutor Mario Burgos that Mancera “at all costs wants Mrs. Ana Victoria to stay clean and that nothing happens to her.”
According to El Medico, Garcia told him that “Mancera was prosecution director here in Cali and helped a lot of people, she cleaned the past of a ton of people, [drug trafficker] ’06’ doesn’t even have a single red light.”
Burgos has been in charge of investigating the Cali network that would consist of drug traffickers, commanders of the security forces and multiple judicial workers, including his boss.