Colombia’s electoral court CNE elected one of its most controversial magistrates as president while looking into campaign finance violations allegedly committed by President Gustavo Petro.
The CNE’s new president, former House Representative Cesar Lorduy of the notoriously corrupt Cambio Radical party, will preside over the Petro investigation while the Prosecutor General’s Office looks into sexual harassment charges leveled by a coalition congresswoman last year.
Lorduy, whose membership of the CNE was proposed by the notoriously corrupt Cambio Radical party in 2022, spent months in jail in 1979 after he fatally shot a girl in the face.
According to criminal charges filed by House Representative Ingrid Aguirre (Fuerza Ciudadana), the CNE magistrate sought a COP500 million ($119,400) bribe and sexual favors ahead of the 2023 local elections.
In return, Lorduy said he would allow the candidacy of Patricia Caicedo, who was running for mayor of Santa Marta at the time, according to Aguirre.
The CNE magistrate successfully led the initiative to revoke the candidacy of Caicedo. This decision allowed the candidate of Cambio Radical, Carlos Pinedo, to become mayor in November last year.