Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Monday that the prosecution is being used to traffic drugs and protects alleged criminals in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura.
The president referred to mounting evidence that deputy chief prosecutor Martha Mancera has been trying to cover up the alleged drug trafficking activities of the director of the prosecution’s Technical Investigations Unit (CTI) in the port city.
Recordings and officials documents published by weekly Cambio suggest that Mancera knew about the alleged criminal activity of CTI Buenaventura chief Francisco Martinez since 2021.
Instead of investigating Martinez, the prosecution filed drug trafficking charges against two undercover agents who informed her about the regional CTI director.
Mancera told press last week that the agents were being investigated because they failed to debrief their regional supervisor about their participation in drug trafficking in the Valle del Cauca province.
Colombia’s deputy chief prosecutor again linked to drug trafficking
Cambio on Monday published a prosecution document that authorized the agents’ undercover activities as part of a counternarcotics operation.
The weekly additionally published a recording from 2021 in which one of the agents informed a regional prosecution chief of Martinez’s alleged involvement in the drug trade.
The revelations sparked a new confrontation between the president and Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa.
“How is it possible that they used the prosecution to export cocaine in Buenaventura and have protected the alleged criminal?” Petro said Monday on social media.
My questions are: if there were friendly conversations between the CTI chief in Buenaventura and a drug trafficker a few months ago, why is he still in charge? Why did they protect him? How much cocaine have they exported using this position in the prosecution?
President Gustavo Petro
In response, the prosecution on Tuesday issued a press release, claiming that the president’s comments about the scandal were “false and tendentious.”
Barbosa said at a public event that “they want turn the deputy chief prosecutor into a drug trafficker to pressure the court.”
Mancera could succeed Barbosa as chief prosecutor if the Supreme Court fails to elect a successor before the end of his term in February.
Barbosa reminded Petro that the prosecution will be able to open criminal investigations against the president after leaving office in 2026.
If the president wants a confrontation with Colombian institutionality, I am ready for it anytime… He should not forget he won’t be in power for 20 years. In two years he will become a citizen again.
Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa
Mancera has been accused of covering for allegedly corrupt officials with ties to drug trafficking since 2021.
