A health scandal court hearing in Bogota became complicated when a defense lawyer was arrested for working with a falsified professional card.
At the same time as a sentence was being debated in the city’s Paloquemao court against a group of people implicated in the health sector scandal, a detective pulled the prosecuting judge aside to announce that one of the defense lawyers had just been arrested, Caracol TV reported Thursday.
Defense lawyer Jose Ramirez Rivera was arrested by agents of the Technical Investigation Team (CTI) of the Prosecutor General’s Office, after being accused by a female lawyer of allegedly stealing her professional identitification number.
“I effectively found that this person had been presenting himself in certain judicial processes as a trustworthy defender of some people and today we have achieved his arrest,” said the lawyer whose card was stolen, according to a separate report by Caracol Radio.
Upon arrest, Ramirez was brought to the court room where the sentencing was taking place.
The case against the other detainees was subsequently suspended, and the proceedings that have thus far occurred may be annulled.