Colombia’s Supreme Court detained a senator for allegedly engaging in real estate and money laundering deals with drug traffickers.
Early on Tuesday, the Supreme Court placed Dilian Francisca Toro under house arrest. The court later order Francisca be moved to a local Bogota prison.
According to the court’s reports, documents and testimonies indicated it was “highly probable” that the senator bought several houses in 2005 belonging to high-ranking members of the now-defunct Cali cartel as well as property belonging to a now-extradited drug trafficker had been bought by Toro and her husband.
The court also said it would try to determine whether the senator had collaborated with the former leader of the Cali cartel, Victor Julio Patiño, to laundry more than $2.8 million of drug money. Francisca has so far denied the accusations.
“I have nothing to fear, I will respond and show that everything I have was acquired in an honest manner,” said Francisca via Twitter in the beginning of July.
Senator Francisca was first investigated by the Supreme Court in 2008, when she was accused of collaborating with drug traffickers in her 2002 election campaign. Drug trafficker Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, alias “Rasguno,” recently told authorities that he had given $170,000 to Francisca’s 2002 campaign.
