Colombia’s former president Alvaro Uribe has paid a visit to his former agriculture minister who is behind bars awaiting trial for allegedly embezzling $25 million in state subsidies.
According to radio station RCN, Uribe visited Andres Felipe Arias in a military compound in Bogota where the former minister is held.
Arias is charged with embezzlement and accused of having used state subsidies to rally political support for his aspirations to become Conservative Party candidate for the 2010 presidential elections. Uribe has insisted his former minister “did not steal” and has implied Arias incarceration was part of a judicial conspiracy.
Arias was the first of two close aides of the former president who were sent to jail within a week; Uribe’s former chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno, was arrested Saturday for allegedly trying to obstruct justice while on trial for his alleged responsibility in the illegal wiretapping of government opponents.
Arias and Moreno have been found guilty by the country’s Inspector General’s Office and barred from holding public office for respectively 15 and 18 years.