Hundreds of real estate properties that were supposed to be transferred to victims of Colombia’s armed conflict ended up in the hands of politicians, according to the government.
Following a meeting with Salvatore Mancuso, the director of the Land Restitution Agency, Felipe Harman, said that some 400 of the former AUC commander’s real estate properties were never included in the list of properties meant for victim reparation.
“This means that over the years a significant amount of assets intended for victim reparations has gone missing,”
The director of the Victims Unit, Lilia Solano, said that “the majority of the assets surrendered” by Mancuso and other former AUC chiefs “don’t appear.”
On a trip to Medellin, Solano went to the affluent Poblado neighborhood to tell press what allegedly happened to an apartment that had been confiscated from extradited crime lord “Don Berna,” one of the AUC’s founders.
The person now living in Berna’s apartment in the Saint Etienne building was convicted former Senator Mario Uribe, the cousin of former President Alvaro Uribe and a long-time associate of Medellin crime syndicate “La Oficina.”
“It is a small example of what has happened. The assets handed over by the paramilitaries effectively became a roulette wheel in the hands of the very politicians” that teamed up with the AUC and its commanders.
Losano said that she requested a meeting with Prosecutor General Luz Adriana Camargo to surrender evidence that would merit a criminal investigation into the claims made by her and Harman.
During Colombia’s armed conflict, paramilitary groups forcibly displaced millions of people. The lands of tens of thousands of these victims ended up in the hands of AUC commanders and their allies in politics and the private sector.
The government has been trying to return these lands to victims since 2011, when Congress adopted the Victims Law, which sought to recover illegally obtained real estate properties to repair victims.