Colombia’s prosecution said it will indict Ecopetrol CEO Ricardo Roa on election fraud and influence peddling charges.
The accusations filed by the prosecution’s anti-corruption unit are the result of two separate investigations into corruption allegations leveled against the director of the country’s state oil company.
The campaign finance charge
The electoral charge followed an investigation by the notoriously unreliable National Electoral Council (CNE) into campaign finance violations into the 2022 campaign of President Gustavo Petro, which was coordinated by Roa.
The CNE ended up convicting the now-Ecopetrol CEO last year, ordered him to pay a $1.6 million (COP6 billion) fine and forwarded the evidence of the alleged irregularities to the prosecution.
The prosecution’s anti-corruption chief, Raul Gonzalez, told press that he will not request the jailing of Roa for the duration of this trial.
Petro and Roa have always insisted that the CNE investigation was politically motivated.
The luxury apartment
The second indictment followed suspicions of influence peddling that followed the purchase of an apartment in one of Bogota’s most exclusive sectors for $490 thousand (COP1.8 billion), which would be well below the market price.
Roa allegedly purchased this apartment from a company called Princeton International Holding in 2022.
In April of 2023, Petro appointed his former campaign chief as the CEO of Ecopetrol.
In December of last year, media reported that Ecopetrol had given the rights to explore a gas field in San Jacinto, Cordoba, to MKMS Energy, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining firm NG Energy International Corp in 2024.
Italian businessman Serafio Iacono, a major player in Colombia’s oil sector, was the CEO of NG Energy at the time and is reportedly also one of the owners of the company that sold the Bogota apartment to Roa.
According to Iacono, neither Ecopetrol nor Roa had anything to do with the Cordoba gas field.
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