Leaked Audio Shows Colombia’s Former Peace Commissioner Offering a Truce to the Clan del Golfo

A recording published by the investigative unit of Noticias Caracol on June 24, 2026, captured Colombia’s then-High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda proposing a children’s game to a representative of the country’s largest criminal organization. “Let’s play frozen,” Rueda is heard telling Luis Armando Pérez Castañeda, alias “Jerónimo” or “Bruno,” the political spokesman for the Clan del Golfo, in a secret meeting held September 2, 2022, in Urabá, Antioquia, three weeks into President Gustavo Petro’s term. Over the next three years, figures from Colombia’s Ministry of Defense cited by Noticias Caracol show, the Clan del Golfo’s ranks grew from 4,061 fighters to 9,915, and its territorial footprint expanded from 145 municipalities to 338.

The recording is now the subject of a preliminary criminal inquiry by the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) and a separate disciplinary inquiry by the Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office), both opened in June against Rueda, former Defense Minister Iván Velásquez, former National Intelligence Director Jorge Lemus and former Counterintelligence Chief Ricardo Rey Rosanía. Rueda has said the meeting was part of an exploratory phase, not a formal negotiation, and that the freeze-tag comment was a metaphor. The recordings, the numbers and the officials’ own public statements are on record; what follows is drawn from them.

Pérez, whose organization also goes by the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia and answers to top commander Jobanis de Jesús Ávila, alias “Chiquito Malo,” opened the meeting by citing a unilateral ceasefire the Clan del Golfo had declared on August 7, 2022 — Petro’s inauguration day — and asked the government for a reciprocal gesture: the withdrawal of special infiltration units and undercover operations from the group’s territory. “If the organization says there’s been a ceasefire since August 7, then there should also be a gesture from the government, withdrawing the special operations and infiltration units in the area,” Pérez said, according to the recording. “We’re working on that,” Rueda replied.

“There are things that don’t get said outright, because nobody wants to show they’re conceding. Everyone wants to say, ‘I’m strong.’ We know you, we recognize you. Calm down. Look, in another region — what did we achieve? You control up to here. Let’s play frozen. So all three of us stay frozen. Now, if someone decides to move, that’s when the trouble starts.”

— Danilo Rueda, then Colombia’s high commissioner for peace, in a recorded September 2022 meeting with a Clan del Golfo representative

Rueda then went further, according to the recording, offering “two messages: one, a halt to bombardments; two, a decision to clean house in police intelligence.” He tied the bombing halt directly to Velásquez, saying: “We knew there were bombing operations under way. I found out, and we spoke with the minister, and orders were given, for your group and others.” Velásquez’s public position at the time was narrower — that bombing was restricted only where minors might be present. Ministry of Defense data cited by Noticias Caracol shows no aerial bombardments against the Clan del Golfo for roughly two years after the meeting; the first came in late 2024, followed by five more in 2025.

Five days after Petro’s inauguration, on August 12, 2022, the government retired 35 generals and colonels in the largest shake-up of Colombia’s military and police command in recent history. On the recording, Rueda cited that purge to Pérez as evidence of good faith, and went further: three colonels who had been assigned to strategic posts in intelligence, the judicial police directorate and anti-narcotics units — believed to be John Arbey Alzate Duque, Juan Miguel Thiriat Tovar and Zaid Eduardo Pabón Ortega, according to El Colombiano, all tied to the anti-Clan del Golfo operation Agamenón — were removed within about a week of their appointments. “Three were vetoed who had the mission of sabotaging everything,” Rueda said on the recording. “But information came in, and then they criticize the president… because there’s information I can’t share with you.”

Extradition came up last. Pérez asked for a “lifting of arrest warrants” and “extradition orders” as a condition of trust. “All of that gets done,” Rueda replied. Asked for de-escalation of operations in the group’s territory “so there’s trust,” Rueda said: “Yes… that’s possible.” Nearly four years later, in 2026, the government’s peace office formally asked Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo to lift arrest warrants against 29 Clan del Golfo members, including Ávila, the group’s top commander, who is wanted for extradition by US courts on drug-trafficking charges. Camargo declined, citing insufficient verification of the group’s compliance with the negotiations and Colombia’s international extradition obligations; the Supreme Court backed her decision, according to El Colombiano.

Gerson Arias, a researcher at the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (Ideas for Peace Foundation), told Noticias Caracol that the Clan del Golfo “expanded and grew stronger in the midst of these initial explorations,” pointing to “a premature ceasefire, the elimination of bombing operations, and the reduced effectiveness of military, police and judicial operations resulting from a weakening of the intelligence capabilities the Colombian state had built up over years.” Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, drew a similar conclusion from her organization’s own field documentation, saying the combination of an absent security policy and “the perverse or unintended effects” of the total-peace strategy has been linked to armed groups gaining “greater territorial and population control.” By 2025 the Clan del Golfo operated in 23 of Colombia’s 32 departments through four blocs and 25 armed fronts, with trafficking cells reaching Spain, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela, El Colombiano reported; in Antioquia alone, the departmental government put the group’s growth at 60 percent.

The disclosure drew an immediate legal response. Representative Christian Garcés, of the opposition Centro Democrático party, filed a criminal complaint with the Fiscalía days after the recordings surfaced, naming Rueda, Velásquez and Rey Rosanía on charges including concierto para delinquir (conspiracy to commit crimes), revealing state secrets and misuse of privileged information. “If the government committed military decisions, intelligence operations or institutional benefits to favor the Clan del Golfo, Colombia would be facing the possible use of public power for the benefit of a criminal organization,” Garcés said, according to Infobae. Garcés also asked the House Accusations Committee to examine whether Petro himself knew of or directed any of the concessions. The Fiscalía’s own preliminary inquiry, opened in early July, was assigned to the unit of prosecutors who work before the Supreme Court and folded into other ongoing cases examining government favoritism toward armed groups, according to Semana.

A parallel thread involves the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (National Intelligence Directorate, DNI). Video and audio also obtained by Noticias Caracol show Jorge Lemus, then the DNI’s director, and Rey Rosanía, his counterintelligence chief, meeting on August 19, 2025, in Bogotá with Eduard Ferney Rincón, a former trafficker known as “Boyaco Sinaloa” who has said he paid $18 million USD to US authorities to avoid extradition, and a former staffer for the legislative office of Senator María José Pizarro. On the recording, Lemus asked Rincón to lean on congressional contacts to help pass a government bill on armed-group submission to justice, central to the total-peace strategy, and to help establish a direct line to Ávila, whom Lemus said had been avoiding the agency. Lemus has defended the meeting as lawful intelligence work conducted under Colombia’s Intelligence Law and has said the leak of the material endangered intelligence sources and methods.

Rueda, in an interview with Caracol Radio after the recordings surfaced, said the September 2022 meeting was part of a preliminary “exploratory phase,” not a formal negotiation, that only three such meetings took place, all with international witnesses present, and that no ceasefire was ever signed. “In that exploratory phase, there was never any decision by the president of the republic that meant military operations against the group would not continue,” he said. On the officer purge, he said he was never given names: “I was never given the names of police officers who had to be removed from the security forces for abuses or overreach.” Asked about “let’s play frozen,” he called it a metaphor: “To be able to talk, you need a space… but the conversation ends and the game continues. It’s like the cat chasing the mouse.” Velásquez, in a written statement, said his evaluation of senior officers began two weeks before he took office as defense minister and was “a rigorous procedure” based on documented sources, that Rueda “had no participation in or knowledge of that process,” and that bombing suspensions applied only where minors were at risk. “The statements made by Danilo Rueda implicate only him, and he is the one who will have to provide the corresponding explanations,” Velásquez said.

Rueda left the peace commissioner’s post in November 2023; Otty Patiño succeeded him and, with negotiating-team lead Álvaro Jiménez, pursued two rounds of dialogue with the Clan del Golfo in Doha, Qatar — an initial confidence-building agreement in September 2025, followed by a peace agreement signed December 5, 2025, that established temporary concentration zones for the group’s fighters. The first such zone, in Tierralta, Córdoba, was scheduled to receive an initial contingent the day after the audio broke.

Abelardo de la Espriella, who defeated Pacto Histórico Senator Iván Cepeda in the 2026 presidential election, was inaugurated August 7, 2026, in Cali — the first Colombian presidential inauguration held outside Bogotá. “The option of dialogue is completely exhausted,” he declared in his inaugural address, according to Infobae. He announced a security offensive against armed groups, an incoming list of narco-terrorist organizations and Colombia’s entry into the US-backed Escudo de las Américas regional security initiative. Within his first weekend in office, according to Infobae, his government reported operations against Clan del Golfo and dissident FARC fighters in three departments. The Clan del Golfo remains listed by Washington as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.