President Gustavo Petro said Tuesday that a powerful company has become “the greatest danger to Colombia’s democracy.”
The company, Thomas Greg & Sons (TGS), is currently trying to renew a contract with the National Registry that would make it responsible for printing ballots and counting voter sheets in the 2026 elections.
Petro warned for TGS’s “takeover of the electoral processes” after his top anti-corruption adviser, Andres Idarraga, warned Registrar Hernan Penagos that the bidding process may have been rigged in favor of the company.
TGS screwed up the congressional elections in 2022 when its computer software failed to count more than 800,000 votes for Petro’s political party.
In 2018, the Council of State ordered the National Registry to change the vote counting software after concluding that the results of the 2014 congressional elections had been altered through fraud.
TGS has additionally been accused of charging exorbitant prices for its provision of electoral service since 2019.
An report by experts in contractual law that was revealed by news website Cambio in June suggested that the bidding process to print Colombians’ passports that had been granted to the company had been rigged in favor of TGS.
Petro ordered former Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva to withdraw from his obligations with the company, stressing that TGS “can’t monopolize the data of Colombians and scrutinize elections at the same time.”
The company, with the support of Inspector General Margarita Cabello, has been trying to force the government to grant the passport contract.
TGS has been active in Colombia since the 1960’s and has appointed prominent members of the Bogota elite to its board of directors.
Among TGS’s former directors are former President Andres Pastrana, former President Juan Manuel Santos and former Foreign Minister Naomi Sanin.
The company has denied that its success in previous bidding processes was due to corruption.