According to Semana, neither sister held any employment or contract with the government during the period in question, yet between 2024 and 2026 they accumulated enough influence to sway executive-branch decisions, and — according to the magazine’s sources — effectively took control of three state entities: the Departamento Administrativo de la Presidencia de la República (Dapre, the administrative department of the presidency), the Fondo Colombia en Paz (Colombia in Peace Fund), and the now-liquidated Ministerio de la Igualdad (Ministry of Equality). El Tiempo, El Espectador, and other Colombian outlets picked up the allegations within hours.

A Price List for Access

The three whistleblowers, whose identities Semana withheld citing safety concerns, described a fixed tariff structure. A first meeting with the sisters cost $1 million COP. Juliana Guerrero would then allegedly handle the lobbying inside the government in exchange for an advance of $200 million COP plus 10 percent of the value of each project awarded, while businessmen were instructed to communicate exclusively with Verónica Guerrero for status updates. A separate $1 million COP fee applied for arranging meetings between mayors and national government officials.

The money, according to the report, was initially collected by David Trespalacios, a young Barranquilla man close to the family, who told the businessmen in a December 10, 2024 message that Verónica “does not want money in her accounts, which is why I have been collecting and delivering. I am handing her cash in Bogotá.” After an apparent falling-out with Trespalacios, Semana reports, the sisters began receiving deposits directly — including through the mobile payments platform Nequi, to an account number that Verónica identified in a December 28, 2024 chat as belonging to her sister Juliana. Deposit receipts reviewed by the magazine include transfers of $5 million COP, $1.8 million COP, $3.2 million COP, $3.95 million COP, $3.05 million COP, and $10 million COP, among others, and one distribution instruction attributed to Trespalacios reads: “Verónica Guerrero, savings account, 12.5 here; Juliana Guerrero, 12.5 here; Wilmer Trespalacios, 10.”

“If it is true, they gave money like fools, thinking that the ministers or I myself act under pressure from women or out of greed.” — President Gustavo Petro, on X

Aqueducts, Housing, and Security Cameras

The promised projects included an aqueduct in a Cesar municipality to be funded by the Ministry of Housing and channeled — according to what Verónica Guerrero told the businessmen — through then-Vice Minister of Water and Basic Sanitation Edward Libreros, whom Petro later fired on camera during a televised October 2025 council of ministers. Airline tickets purchased by the businessmen on December 5, 2024, to fly Verónica from Bogotá to Aguachica, Cesar, and back from Bucaramanga the same day, form part of the evidence. Semana’s report documents her subsequent WhatsApp updates: “My sister is already on it. She already spoke with him (Edward Libreros). They agreed to meet so she can tell him about the commitment.”

Other promised deals included home-improvement programs across multiple municipalities — under terms one businessman described as $35 million COP per municipality awarded, plus 10 percent of each project’s value — a security camera initiative financed by the Fondo Nacional de Seguridad y Convivencia Ciudadana (Fonsecon, the Interior Ministry’s security and coexistence fund), and, in June 2025, an aqueduct contract in La Guajira worth more than $27 billion COP through the Ministry of Housing. “That one is only with me, because I am the one who assigns it,” Verónica allegedly wrote of the La Guajira project.

“The Boss of Bosses”

Throughout the chats, Verónica Guerrero invoked her sister’s access to the highest levels of the government. “Juliana has a meeting today with the boss of bosses,” she wrote on January 21, 2025, when businessmen pressed for results — an expression the whistleblowers say the sisters used to refer to President Petro. In other messages she claimed to be sitting in budget-release meetings, reported that “the boss of bosses has already given clarity and is signing the unfreezing of ministry resources,” and described maneuvering to protect a secretary general at the Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible (Ministry of Environment): “If they topple my secretary, I lose a lot of things here.”

The magazine’s evidence also points to alleged influence or attempted influence at Fiduagraria S.A. (the state agricultural fiduciary), the Agencia Nacional de Tierras (National Land Agency), the Ministerio de Defensa in contracts at the Hospital Militar Central, and the Dapre. One chat suggests money flowed beyond the sisters: “I understand that is for the people inside (the government) and for you,” a businessman wrote, a characterization Verónica confirmed in the exchange, according to Semana.

More Than $600 Million COP, and Nothing Delivered

None of the promised contracts materialized. The three businessmen told Semana they handed over more than $600 million COP in total between 2024 and 2025. “They robbed us and do not want to give the money back,” they told the magazine. When one of them confronted Juliana Guerrero in the second half of 2025 over $70 million COP transferred to her Nequi account, she replied, per the chats: “I have no problem returning that, but let me talk to her (Verónica) first.” No refund followed, the businessmen say. None of the reports reviewed by Finance Colombia includes a public response from either sister; Semana published video of the two attending the Fiestas del Mar festival in Santa Marta on July 24, the night before the story broke.

Las pruebas que aquí se indican, reflejan, que los llamados “empresarios* se pusieron furiosos y a lo mejor entregaron los chats, porque no les cumplieron. Si es verdad, dieron dineros como pendejos, pensando que los ministros o yo mismo, actuamos por presiones de mujeres o por… https://t.co/JWaAtnGYz0

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) July 25, 2026

Petro: They “Gave Money Like Fools”

President Petro responded on his X account the same day, arguing that the story proves his government’s safeguards worked precisely because the contracts were never awarded. “The evidence indicated here reflects that the so-called ‘businessmen’ got furious and probably handed over the chats because they were not delivered for. If it is true, they gave money like fools, thinking that the ministers or I myself act under pressure from women or out of greed,” he wrote, adding: “The magazine would do a great favor by handing those chats to the prosecutor’s office… The corrupt businessmen appear to have been swindled, and the government prevented the theft.” He also quipped that the “boss of bosses apparently torpedoed the deals because he thinks about things other than greed,” and suggested the businessmen might “even turn out to be abelardistas” — a reference to supporters of President-elect Abelardo De La Espriella, who takes office August 7.

Criticism came from inside Petro’s own coalition. Carlos Carrillo, former director of the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (UNGRD, the national disaster risk management unit) — itself the center of an earlier procurement scandal that shook the Petro administration — wrote on X that although Semana “has an evident political bias, the evidence it publishes against the Guerrero sisters is very serious. The justice system must investigate what crimes may have been committed. It is very worrying that Fonsecon is also being mentioned — the multibillion-peso Interior Ministry fund in the hands of Armando Benedetti’s friends.” Benedetti, the interior minister whom Colombian media have long described as Juliana Guerrero’s political sponsor, was himself sanctioned by the US Treasury’s OFAC in October 2025 alongside President Petro and members of the president’s family.

The report also vindicates warnings made months earlier by Angie Rodríguez, the former Dapre director who left the government in January 2026 and gave an explosive interview to Semana in April: “She (Juliana Guerrero), without any scruples, has the nerve to go to state entities to give orders, to say what gets contracted, who gets hired and who does not. She and her sister go to the Ministry of Equality and make decisions without being public officials,” Rodríguez said at the time.

The Only Case So Far: Fake Diplomas

Despite the mounting allegations, the only criminal proceeding currently facing Juliana Andrea Guerrero Jiménez is the fake-credentials case that derailed her 2025 nomination as vice minister of youth. The Fiscalía General de la Nación (Office of the Attorney General) has finalized an indictment charging her with procedural fraud and ideological falsehood in a public document, alleging she uploaded fake accounting degrees from the Fundación Universitaria San José — an institution where prosecutors say she never attended class or sat an exam — to the government’s SIGEP II résumé system in order to qualify for the vice ministry. The accusation hearing is set for August 5 at 4:00 p.m. before Bogotá’s 46th Circuit Court, two days before Petro leaves office. The university’s former secretary general, Luis Carlos Gutiérrez Martínez, faces charges of falsehood in a public document in the same proceeding for signing off on the degrees.

Guerrero remains the presidency’s delegate to the university council of the Universidad Popular del Cesar (Popular University of Cesar) and retains a state-funded protection detail from the Unidad Nacional de Protección (National Protection Unit). Prior to the events described in the investigation, her only documented government work was an $11 million COP advisory contract at the Interior Ministry, while Verónica Guerrero held two contracts totaling $19 million COP at Colombia Compra Eficiente (Colombia’s public procurement agency) and one for $11 million COP at the Interior Ministry, according to public procurement records cited by Semana.

The scandal lands in the final two weeks of a presidency already battered by corruption cases — from the UNGRD contracting affair to the illicit-enrichment investigation of former foreign minister Laura Sarabia — and hands incoming president De La Espriella’s attorney general appointees an early test: whether the chats, audios, and bank records now in Semana’s possession become a criminal file.

Who’s Who in the Guerrero Case

• Juliana Guerrero — Cesar-born political operator, former Interior Ministry adviser, and failed nominee for vice minister of youth; described by Semana as the most powerful woman in the Petro government. Accused by three businessmen of selling access to ministry contracts; separately indicted for uploading fake university degrees, with an accusation hearing set for August 5.
• Verónica Guerrero — Juliana’s sister and, per the chats, the network’s day-to-day interlocutor with the paying businessmen. Former contractor at Colombia Compra Eficiente and the Interior Ministry, with no state role during the alleged scheme.
• David Trespalacios — A young Barranquilla man close to the Guerrero family who, according to the report, collected cash and deposits so the sisters could keep money out of their own accounts, before a falling-out changed the arrangement.
• Gustavo Petro — Outgoing president of Colombia, leaving office August 7. The “boss of bosses” invoked in the chats, per the whistleblowers. He says the story shows his government blocked the corruption and that the businessmen were swindled.
• Edward Libreros — Former vice minister of water and basic sanitation, named in the chats as the channel for the Cesar aqueduct project; fired by Petro during a televised council of ministers in October 2025. The chats record the sisters’ claims about him; no response from Libreros appears in the published reports.
• Angie Rodríguez — Former Dapre director and one-time Petro confidante who publicly warned in April 2026 that the sisters were giving hiring and contracting orders inside state entities without holding any public office.
• Armando Benedetti — Interior minister and Juliana Guerrero’s longtime political sponsor, per Colombian press reports; sanctioned by OFAC in October 2025. Carrillo warned that Fonsecon, a fund under Benedetti’s ministry, figures in the allegations.
• Carlos Carrillo — Former UNGRD director who called the published evidence “very serious” and urged the justice system to investigate.
• Elvia Milena Sanjuán and Jorge “Popo” Barros — Governor of Cesar and a Cesar departmental deputy linked to the Gnecco political clan, respectively; the businessmen asked the sisters to broker meetings with both. An audio records Juliana agreeing. Neither is accused of wrongdoing in the report.
• Luis Carlos Gutiérrez Martínez — Former secretary general of the Fundación Universitaria San José, dismissed in late 2025 and charged with falsehood in a public document for certifying Guerrero’s degrees.
• The three businessmen — Unnamed contractors from Norte de Santander, Valle del Cauca, Cesar, and Santander who say they paid more than $600 million COP and received nothing. Petro suggests they were simply defrauded; they remain the case’s key witnesses.

Barring any post-election drama, President-elect de la Espriella will take over a very divided country, and if he is smart, he will understand that he was the first choice of only a minority of the electorate. He will have a choice. He can govern for the small hard core, or he can be a conciliator.

Colombia has a nasty history of political violence, going back to the country’s founding. The person most Colombians see as the founder of the nation, Colombia’s George Washington figure, Simón Bolívar, barely escaped with his life during what was known as the Septembrine Conspiracy, which was born out of a conflict in visions for the new country. For most of the country’s history, the hostility between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the two primary political parties for most of Colombia’s history, manifested itself with bullets every bit as much as with ballots. Even though Colombia has, for almost all of its history, been a real democracy; the country has had only one military strongman dictator, and even he tried to be something of a reformer; violence has always had a hand in politics.

“With less than half the vote, the only mandate he holds is for an inclusive, conciliatory approach.” — Loren Moss, Finance Colombia

I once was at a talk in Medellín, years ago, where the businessman Chris Daes was asked, “When will Colombia advance?” “When we learn to stop hating each other,” he said.

Last night, after the election results were announced, police stations in Kennedy and Bosa, low-income neighborhoods in the southwest of Bogotá, were attacked. Why? The police hadn’t done anything. Riot police were called out to Puerto Rellena in Cali after roads were blocked by Cepeda supporters. In Medellín, some supporters of the president-elect turned up with bats and clubs outside Plaza Mayor, one of the city’s main public squares, probably supporters of de la Espriella, and let me emphasize that this is my guess, but no violence was reported.

Outgoing President Gustavo Petro called for calm, but also complained about US President Donald Trump’s open support of de la Espriella, forgetting that just months ago he was in the US and called for the US military to turn against its own government. Petro and the losing candidate, Senator Iván Cepeda, have said that while they acknowledge the preliminary vote count, they will not concede until an official final count, and they are calling for a scrutiny of the ballots.

So what happened here?

Three weeks ago, Colombia held the first round of presidential voting. The early favorite, Paloma Valencia of the right-wing establishment Centro Democrático party, backed by former president Álvaro Uribe, came in third, behind the right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella and the ally of outgoing president Gustavo Petro, Senator Iván Cepeda of the leftist Pacto Histórico (Historic Pact). In Colombia there is an open first round, which can field many candidates, but the top two vote-getters advance to a final round unless one candidate clears 50% plus one.

Most people thought Cepeda would come in first with a unified left, but de la Espriella came in first, Cepeda second, and Valencia third. My take on this is very clear: Colombians were saying that they reject Gustavo Petro’s collectivist socialist experiment, but that they also reject Álvaro Uribe as the flag-bearer for the right. A sort of “we don’t like them, but we don’t like you either.”

So what happened in the past three weeks? Exactly what I expected. The outgoing president’s political machine moved to mass mobilization: get the buses out, get the affinity groups, such as indigenous leaders and unions, to mobilize. Something interesting happened: a government worker I know in immigration was told, and convinced, that she would lose her job if de la Espriella won. Her union told her this, of course. Cepeda and Petro’s movement has counted on its ability to mobilize people through group affiliation, working through organized structures to get out the vote. It was very effective, but not quite enough.

On the other hand, the split vote between Paloma Valencia and Abelardo de la Espriella came together, sort of, but not in a coordinated fashion. There was no real way to mobilize lukewarm people who were not already behind one of those two candidates. The business community had largely already opposed the Petro-Cepeda project, but it does not have the same mobilization machinery in place.

There will be time for a lot more journalism on this, but I want to get this initial reporting out quickly. Beyond that dynamic, what other factors came into play? Several:

• The outgoing president ran his administration like a game of thrones, or some kind of reality show. On average, he was bringing in a new cabinet minister every three weeks. It was nonstop drama and intrigue, and Cepeda’s message of “stay the course” ran up against that.
• Then there was the treatment of Vice President Francia Márquez. Petro used her to try to win the Afro-Colombian vote, but once they were elected, they tried to sideline her and treat her as a token. She rebelled against that and has called out her own administration for its corruption and racism. Over the past four years, Márquez has actually seemed more serious than Petro, who has a habit of crazy talk. By picking Aída Quilcué, Cepeda made it look like more of the same, and, fair or not, it made Quilcué look like a token candidate. Maybe it isn’t fair, but you can blame the Petro administration for creating that environment.
• Uribe’s first candidate choice, Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay (no relation), was assassinated on the orders of, according to Gustavo Petro’s own attorney general, the Segunda Marquetalia, a FARC dissident structure co-founded by Jesús Santrich, who was on his way to being extradited to the United States until that was allegedly blocked by Iván Cepeda’s efforts. Whether or not it is fair, for a lot of people in Colombia this is emblematic of Cepeda’s nurturing approach to the guerrilla groups, which have been growing stronger under the Pacto Histórico’s dialogue-first approach.
• The current administration is stained with several corruption scandals: the UNGRD scandal, in which money meant to bring water to poor, isolated families in the deserts of La Guajira was robbed for a political bribery fund; the ongoing scandals around Ricardo Roa and state petroleum company Ecopetrol (NYSE: EC), where Roa has been charged over alleged campaign-spending violations; the fiasco over the printing of Colombian passports; and a move that really angered the paisas (people of Antioquia and Medellín), the appointment of indicted former mayor Daniel Quintero to a government position supervising the finances of the country’s health system. Here you have a man with something like 40 counts of indictment for corruption, though let me be clear, he has not been convicted yet, and you appoint him to supervise the finances of the country’s primary health system? Usually when people are facing charges, they say something like “I am innocent, but I will resign to focus on clearing my name.” This one went full steam ahead. That undoubtedly cost votes among those who prioritize clean government.
• Cepeda’s running mate, Aída Quilcué, who never went to college, accused graduates of Colombia’s best universities of having “only learned to steal the people’s money.” She tried to walk that back after her statement blew up, but the damage was done. She was clearly attacking people who attended private universities in Colombia, many of which have no elite pretensions and specialize in educating low-income students.

What do I think will happen?

Assuming the vote count is not overturned, de la Espriella will take over the executive branch with no political machinery in Congress, so he will have to negotiate to get anything done. This is not a situation like El Salvador or Venezuela, where you come in and take over the whole government. To its credit, Colombia has strong institutions. Had Cepeda won, he would have come in with the largest bloc of legislators in Congress and might have found it relatively easy to push through his agenda. With de la Espriella, not so much, and I think this is a good thing. Personally, I like divided government as a concept, because it encourages moderation, consensus, and negotiation.

I expect the guerrilla groups to try to seize the initiative, and I expect their violence to increase in the short term as they try to assert their authority. Longer term, I think they are worse off, and they know the military will be after them soon, so they will make what hay they can while the sun shines. Expect them to try to “punish” the country for electing the candidate most hostile to them, a pattern that has already mocked the outgoing government’s “Total Peace” strategy.

Outgoing President Gustavo Petro will not shut up once out of office. He will become a full-time presence on social media and make as much noise as possible in opposition to the incoming administration. Unlike former President Juan Manuel Santos, Petro will be more like Álvaro Uribe, who has remained addicted to the spotlight, to influence, and to the thrill of power. In places where there is a tradition of former presidents ceding the spotlight, he won’t follow it. Petro will take every opportunity to travel around the world and throughout Colombia to speak, as he is entitled to, and to fashion for himself the role of dear father of the oppressed.

Petro and Cepeda and their movement will, if not explicitly then tacitly, reactivate the primera línea (front line), the aggressive activist youth street movement, not a formal organization, that mobilizes, sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently, against whoever opposes the Pacto Histórico. Last night we already saw violence in the low-income areas of Bogotá, and we saw riot police called out in Cali. It is not always that someone gives an order to go out and protest, even though there have been accusations of exactly that, for example against Petro ally and senator Gustavo Bolívar.

Colombian law says the runner-up in the presidential election gets a seat in the Senate, so Cepeda will return to the Senate, where he will lead the opposition. He already has a bloc of some 30 legislators behind him and is a Senate veteran, so he will be a very powerful voice.

What do I hope will happen?

I hope de la Espriella will have a plan to lift up the poor and the marginalized, and Colombia has plenty. He says he will govern for all the people, and I hope so. This was a very polarized election. People who feel excluded from opportunity largely voted for Cepeda and now feel they have lost. De la Espriella has a window of opportunity to do what he said in his election-night speech and govern for all Colombians. I hope he understands that, with less than 50% of the vote, the only mandate he has is for an inclusive, conciliatory approach.

His administration is inheriting a fiscal mess, as the current government has run up the debt. I hope that, along with Vice President-elect José Manuel Restrepo, they can properly manage this and navigate Colombia’s economy through rough times. Because the government will need to find dollars to make these debt payments, the peso will eventually fall, unless the US does something stupid to wreck its own currency. The opposition will try to blame the new administration for this, even though they planted the seeds for these fiscal weeds that will soon sprout.

I hope Colombia becomes safer for Colombians, and that the guerrilla groups, the mafias, and the drug traffickers shrink. It may be utopian to think they will be eliminated in four years, but my hope is that Colombia becomes safer, especially for poor Colombians, who are by far the primary victims of these groups. In recent years, unlike in the old days, the rich have been largely insulated from the depredations of guerrillas and extortionists, but the poor continue to suffer. So I hope de la Espriella goes after these groups, but in a way that respects and protects human rights, something Uribe failed to do during his time in power, leading to many innocent people becoming victims not just of the guerrillas, but of state violence. I sincerely hope, and will be watching closely, that the state becomes a protector of the poor rather than a victimizer of them. Many poor Colombians suffered under Uribe’s watch, and many continue to suffer under the current Petro government, which has simply not protected them from the depredations of groups like the ELN, the Clan del Golfo, and the FARC dissidents.

People to watch

• Armando Benedetti. The interior minister has been Petro’s consigliere, but he also seems to hold some kind of strange power over Petro. The US government, or in other words Donald Trump, placed him on the Clinton List, which will complicate his life personally and professionally once he is out of office.
• Daniel Quintero. The former Medellín mayor is already battling serious corruption charges, and while he found a friend in Gustavo Petro, that protection will no longer be there. There will be no place for him in the incoming government, and he still has to face all these charges. With no power to protect his allies, many of them also indicted, will they turn on him and spill the frijoles?
• Álvaro Uribe. No doubt pleased, he didn’t get his first choice, which was his own candidate, but he and de la Espriella clearly share a fondness, and their families go way back. De la Espriella’s father was a Liberal Party supporter of Uribe, and Uribe rewarded him with a juicy notary appointment decades ago.

A win for the business sector

Objectively, this is a win for the business sector. Business groups like Fenalco and ANDI have expressed their support for de la Espriella, and he has expressed his explicit support for the petroleum and mining sectors. I just don’t see any major businesses or trade groups that came out in support of Cepeda. Certainly Cepeda and Petro have support from individual businesspeople, but as organized industry groups, I just haven’t seen it anywhere.

Anecdotes

The polls closed barely twelve hours ago, and overnight I tried to gather the opinions of a few people. This is not a scientific poll, and to be clear and fair, Finance Colombia is a business-oriented publication, and I simply know a lot more businesspeople and entrepreneurs than I know community organizers and militant activists. So this is not any kind of objective sample; it is simply personal feedback gathered the very night of the election:

• A member of the Wayúu community in La Guajira told me they went for Cepeda, so they are not pleased.
• In a split family, both spouses professionals from humble backgrounds, the husband, a labor lawyer who contracts with the government, went for Cepeda, but his wife, a middle manager at a bank, went for de la Espriella.
• A psychologist who originally voted for Sergio Fajardo in the first round told me she voted blank, because she saw both candidates as extremists, a left-wing extremist versus a right-wing extremist, and she was disgusted at her country’s polarization.
• A police officer commented to me, “Better this loco than the other loco,” meaning he would take de la Espriella but considered both of them crazy. I think this is a common sentiment; it was not an endorsement of one so much as thinking the other was the worse option.
• A domestic worker told me she voted for de la Espriella, hoping he will take action against rising crime and violence.
• There were pro-Cepeda protests and some street violence in the mostly poor southwest of Bogotá, but there were celebrations in parts of the north of the city, and in the high-income El Poblado area of Medellín the celebrations looked like Colombia had just won the World Cup. Even where I live, in a rural area about an hour from Medellín, you could hear spontaneous car parades and firecrackers all through the night.
• Small businesspeople and Colombian investors I know have, to a person, been celebrating.

The most important takeaway, and something Colombians should be proud of, is that they have just held a peaceful, free, and fair election. Not every country can do that. A lot of hard work remains, and a lot can still go wrong. Count on Finance Colombia to bring you timely updates and analysis.

Leyva alleges that Petro and Quesada disseminated information based on manipulated recordings that falsely linked him to a plot to oust the head of state. The complaint states that a forensic analysis found the audio “is not original or presented in its entirety” and “was capriciously edited to be disseminated with a completely contrived meaning—an entrapment of the victims”. Leyva claims the recordings were handed to Quesada, who then used the Spanish newspaper to “fabricate a coup d’état”.

On September 23, 2025, President Gustavo Petro stated on his X account that a complaint would be filed against him from the U.S.. He referred to Leyva as “the Hidalgo” and accused him and his “golpista allies” of trying to overthrow him. Petro also responded to previous allegations from Leyva regarding his health and absences from international commitments, denying that he was intoxicated. He mentioned that his medical condition prevents him from consuming strong liquor. Leyva had previously submitted a 33-page document to the Colombian House of Representatives’ Investigation and Accusation Commission, detailing what he considered erratic behavior by the president in international settings and requesting that Petro undergo medical and toxicological exams.

The complaint says that Colombian president falsely accused his former foreign minister of plotting a coup with US politicians against him.

The complaint details a news article published by El País on June 29, 2025, titled “Former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva sought Trump’s complicity in the United States to topple Petro”. The article, which cited recordings and sources close to the White House, alleged Leyva was “seeking support to bring down the president of Colombia and place Francia Márquez in his place”. Leyva’s complaint asserts that this publication and subsequent accusations were based on false information. He claims the recordings were in the possession of the Colombian secret service and that President Petro listened to them, becoming “very annoyed” before publicly accusing Leyva of attempting a coup. Leyva’s complaint includes an expert report that concluded the audio was edited, with added noises, and that the original file was not presented intact.

The former minister contests the article’s claims about his whereabouts and actions in the U.S.. He states he was in the U.S. for eight days, from January 3 to January 11, 2025. He refutes the article’s suggestion of meetings with Republican advisers in April of that year, pointing out that Donald Trump was sworn in as head of state on January 20, 2025, and therefore the White House staff was not yet in place when Leyva was in the U.S.. He also denies that he or his son, Jorge Leyva, met with or even intended to meet with U.S. Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart or Carlos A. Giménez. Leyva asserts that the newspaper never contacted him for comment.

The complaint details Quesada’s interviews with Colombian media outlets, including Caracol Televisión and Caracol Radio. In these interviews, Quesada admitted the audios were edited “for the understanding of the spectator, of the readers” and that some parts were “confusing”. He also stated that the audios were in the possession of the Colombian secret service, which showed them to the President.

In addition, Leyva’s complaint highlights the relationship between Quesada and Lorena Arboleda Zárate, who served as press chief for the Petro presidential campaign. The complaint states that Quesada and Arboleda had a child born on April 11, 2025. Arboleda was named Counselor of Foreign Relations in New York via a decree signed by President Petro on January 20, 2025.

The complaint suggests that Quesada and Petro “would have conspired to filter the fraudulent recordings and manipulate information” through the article published in

El País to portray Leyva, his son Jorge, his sister Dorothy, Republican congressmen, and President Trump as “co-conspirators in a coup d’état”.

Leyva Cites US Law in Seeking Indictment

In his request to US authorities, Leyva suggests several criminal statutes that may be applicable, including:

18 U.S.C. § 371

— Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

18 U.S.C. § 1001

— False Statements

18 U.S.C. § 241

— Conspiracy Against Rights

18 U.S.C. § 2

— Aiding and Abetting

He also references US Supreme Court cases, including

Branzburg v. Hayes (1972), which established that the First Amendment does not exempt a reporter from responding to a grand jury subpoena and answering questions relevant to a criminal investigation. He also cites

United States v. Sterling (4th Cir. 2013), which reinforced that a journalist can be compelled to testify about a source when the information is related to a crime.

The complaint concludes with Leyva offering to cooperate fully with the US Department of Justice as a complainant and to provide any additional evidence.

The translated criminal complaint follows:

Bogotá D.C., Republic of Colombia

September 25, 2025

Madam

Attorney General of the United States of America

PAMELA BONDI

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Subject: I denounce for the opening of an indictment those who I indicate in section I of this brief, so that you, Mrs. Attorney General, initiate the necessary investigations to proceed to apply federal regulations and jurisprudence in order to guarantee complete justice.

1. 1. COMPLAINANT DETAILS

Full name: Álvaro Leyva Durán

Status: Lawyer with professional card No. 29504-D1, issued by the competent national authority. Former representative to the Chamber, former senator, former minister of state, former constituent.

Documents: Colombian Citizenship Card No. 17.064.0362

Colombian Diplomatic Passport No. DP069531

Contact: reencuentro3000@hotmail.com

1. 1. DATA OF THE ACCUSED

Name: Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego, President of the Republic of Colombia

Document: Colombian Citizenship Card No. 208.079 of Cogua,

Cundinamerca, Colombia

Contact: contacto@presidencia.gov.co

Residence: Presidential Palace, Casa de Nariño

Carrera 8 # 7-26, La Candelaria, Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Contact: Phone +57 601 562 9300 (Presidency)

Name: Juan Diego Quesada

Position: Correspondent for the Andean area (Republic of Colombia, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Republic of Peru, Republic of Ecuador), of the newspaper El País, Madrid headquarters, capital of the Kingdom of Spain

Contact: Diario el País, Madrid, Kingdom of Spain, +34 914 400 135

Contact: +57 315 4556348 / +34 914 400 135 / +34 910 538 059

Address, El País newspaper, Madrid, capital of the Kingdom of Spain: Calle Miguel

Yusten Nº 40, 28037, Madrid, Spain

Contact: LinkedIn

III. FACTS THAT ARE DENOUNCED

The Spanish journalist Juan Diego Quesada, correspondent of the newspaper El País de Madrid, frequented his presence in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela from the moments in preparation for the last presidential elections that took place in that country. His repeated visits to Venezuela and the reason for them are mentioned in an interview that journalist Carol Ann Figueroa made to him on her program La Pill (Podcast/Spotify and YouTube), on July 4.

This explains why his frequent contact with Mr. Armando Benedetti has been going on for some time.

The former Colombian ambassador to Venezuela, Mr. Armando Benedetti, today Minister of the Interior of the Petro government, who by the way, Mrs. Attorney General, in an interview with journalist Patricia Lara Salive of the Colombian magazine Cambio, published on April 27 of this year, states that “(…) I don’t want to be addicted but I am,” he was accompanied during his diplomatic tenure by the official Mrs. Sandra Lorena Arboleda Zárate, a protégé of Mr. Benedetti and of the President of the Republic himself. Is

it is clear then that the relationship between the four of them (Benedetti, Gustavo Petro, Sandra Lorena Arboleda and Juan Diego Quesada), goes back a long way. For more charity, Arboleda Zárate was Press Chief of the Petro Presidente campaign. See footer.

The fact is that the aforementioned Spanish journalist, as already noted, correspondent of the newspaper El País with headquarters in Madrid, capital of the Kingdom of Spain, impregnates Mrs. Arboleda Zárate, thus making the journalist a figure particularly inclined to the current Minister of the Interior of Colombia Armando Benedetti and the Head of State.  Dr. Gustavo Petro.

The intricate relationship that arose makes Juan Diego Quesada a very useful instrument. For this reason, you were given some recordings that were made fraudulently to me, Madam Attorney General, on the basis of which the aforementioned journalist proceeds to resort to a malicious invention by instrumentalizing for the disastrous purposes the aforementioned Spanish newspaper, of which I repeat, you are a correspondent. He ended up criminally forging an entrapment.

Thus, on June 29, 2025, the newspaper “El País” of Madrid headlined:

Former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva searched in the United States

Trump’s complicity to overthrow Petro

Under the title:

“The former foreign minister, according to audios and testimonies close to the White House to which EL PAÍS has had access, was gathering support to bring down the president of Colombia and place Francia Márquez in his place.”

In the development of the news the newspaper indicates: “The recordings to which EL PAÍS has had access have been in the hands of the Colombian secret service.” And he adds: “The president listened to them in his office and was very upset. Later, during a speech, he accused Leyva of trying to perpetrate a coup d’état against him, although he did not offer further details. The former foreign minister, worried about the president’s revelation, went to Madrid for security reasons.”

Allow me to tell you at this time, Madam Attorney General, that a forensic study carried out by a recognized expert fell on the aforementioned recordings. It was possible to establish that it was a single recording; The originality of this file (recording) was analyzed by means of metadata.

It was concluded that the audio is not original or presented in its entirety. It was capriciously edited to be disseminated with a totally accommodating sense – entrapment of the victims. Noises were added. The aforementioned expert report is under chain of custody.

Juan Diego Quesada, in an irresponsible manner, compromises the important newspaper mentioned above, for which he is a correspondent, with the fabrication of a coup d’état allegedly promoted by the one who presents this complaint to you, Madam Attorney General, in collusion with public officials and advisers to Republican congressmen of your country, the United States of America. A whole fiction of a criminal conduct of Mr. Juan Diego Quesada, together with Mr. Gustavo Petro Urrego, President of Colombia. From this, the traceability of the iter criminis can be achieved so that the corresponding indictment falls on the accused  .

In the same edition of the Madrid edition of El País (Sunday, June 29, 2025), the date of President Gustavo Petro’s arrival in Seville, Spain, otherwise coincides with the date of President Gustavo Petro’s arrival in Seville, Spain, the newspaper points out: “Álvaro Leyva sought Trump’s complicity in the United States to overthrow Petro. I emphasize this because by the time of my few days in your country, Madam Attorney General, President Trump and his collaborators at the level of government had not yet been sworn in.

It is recalled that President Trump was sworn in as Head of State on the day

January 20, 2025. It is easy for you, Madam Attorney General, to confirm

with the immigration authorities at their disposal, that I arrived in the United States on Friday, January 3 of this year and that I left their country on Saturday, January 11. That is, this year, Madam Attorney General. I was in the USA for eight calendar days in total. So, that the White House “never considered the proposal” is a clumsy claim. It borders on stupidity. A total fallacy. Aberrant insult.

Alluding to an alleged interlocutor or informant of his, the journalist Quesada states: “He told us [referring to Álvaro Leyva, who signed the complaint], that he had all the tools to execute a plan to remove him [Gustavo Petro]. Her place would be taken by Francia Márquez [the vice president]. He [Leyva] had evidence that Petro could not continue to hold office and that if this went ahead, the president would not have the capacity to respond.” And Juan Diego Quesada adds: “The help of the Americans was very important,” says one of the people who met with Leyva, 82, in April. As you can see, Madam Attorney General, Juan Diego Quesada is physically present to me in the month of April of this year in your country. It was clear to me that I left the USA on the date already noted. I repeat: Saturday, January 11. The Attorney General can ascertain from the corresponding immigration records that I have not returned to the United States of America since that date.

https://caracol.com.co/2025/01/20/posesion-of-donald-trump-2025-livelast-hour-of-the-ceremony-and-his-first-decisions/.

The aforementioned journalist Quesada, Madam Attorney General, is adding lies. More insults. More trappings.

“The former foreign minister has not answered the questions on this matter that this newspaper has asked him,” says his correspondent Quesada.  Another lie. That newspaper has never asked me any questions. And he adds an additional falsehood like this: “(…). The former foreign minister and his son, Jorge Leyva, have good contacts among the ranks of the Republican Party of the United States.” And he continues: “In that way they asked their friends to organize a meeting with Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, representative for Florida.”

Madam Attorney General, it is easy for you to determine since when my son Jorge Leyva has not traveled to the United States of America. I can tell you in advance: For several years. Absolutely impossible his presence in the time, manner and place indicated by the journalist Juan Diego Quesada.

And the same shameless journalist continues: “(…). They also intended to meet with another well-known congressman in Miami, Carlos Antonio Giménez.” “They had,“ says Quesada. Are you referring to my son and me? Jorge Leyva, the one who has been absent for years, and me, who is making this complaint? I apologize to Carlos Antonio Giménez. I did not know the important role of Representative Giménez in U.S. politics. I confess that I knew nothing about him. I had no news of his background. We had no intention then of looking for the aforementioned congressman.

Madam Attorney General, I would like to refer to an interview that a Colombian media outlet of significant national and international importance gave to journalist Juan Diego Quesada on July 1. It is the Caracol Television Network. (Morning program, Noticias Caracol en Vivo). Interviewer, journalist Juan Camilo Cortés.

In the interview, which is fully included in the previous footnote, among the various responses, Juan Diego Quesada affirms what I record below:

To the question (the first), where the audios come from, he answers: “Well. A journalistic work from sources that I have cultivated for a long time. Almost from the beginning of the government. I can’t say much more.”

He adds: “I make a clarification about the first thing I told you… They are sources that I have had for a long time… no… not necessarily bound by institutionality.” Remember, Madam Attorney General, by the corresponding footnote, that Mrs. Sandra Lorena Arboleda Zárate, was head of the presidential campaign of the current President Gustavo Petro.

When asked if the audios are edited, he accepts that they were edited. And he adds: “There is a larger version, but it was edited for… for the understanding of the viewer, of the readers… they were parts where it was confusing… you didn’t understand what you heard and you didn’t… it did not add anything to the information.”

To the question about the fact that the journalist Quesada in his news item (the one published in El País de Madrid, on June 29), points out the search for meetings that Leyva has had with Republican congressmen, especially two, the interviewee says: “I have that documented. In fact, I spent a few weeks in the United States, in New York. Specifically I received the audios, but we do not publish like this lightly, we do not publish what we receive without checking and that was an investigation of ours that does not reach three weeks, it would remain in eighteen, nineteen, twenty days and I had access to advisors of these Republicans, even they came out yesterday and did not deny their … meetings with Álvaro Leyva that his son also played a role. What was said in those meetings… The testimonies I have collected say more or less what he says in the audios. (…)”.

It is worth noting Madam Attorney General, that the content of the audios does not refer at all to that particular. On the other hand, I tell you, Madam Attorney General, that I do not know a single adviser to any Republican. Not a single one. You may well find out.

On the subject, Juan Diego Quesada adds: “Yes… we have even interviewed you… We have listened to interviews. This morning Rep. Carlos Giménez said… he says, I don’t know how much influence former Foreign Minister Leyva and his son have on U.S. politics…”

Alluding to my name and Jorge Leyva, my son, the journalist Quesada indicates:

“He knows people, the son knows people mostly from Florida, I guess the next step was Donald J. Trump, but… have… the influence I suppose is small, it also sounds very crazy… that the United States, which is involved in a thousand things, suddenly worries about Petro when… when neither the situation is coup nor … or anything… The thing is that not even the United States has done anything in Venezuela, so I imagine that it would not have Colombia under its magnifying glass.”

Madam Attorney General: Mr. Journalist Juan Diego Quesada, correspondent in the Andean region of the newspaper El País of the Kingdom of Spain, invented and accommodated false value judgments.

The interview with Juan Diego Quesada continues, as follows: “There is also another detail of the investigation… This article does not take President Petro by surprise. (…). Of course, because I consulted him. I consulted him this week, or well last week before the publication because I wanted to get his version (…)”. (…), I tell him that… that my investigation is solid and I have verified that he went to the United States to seek the complicity of the… of the White House, which of course I would not publish audios like that out of nowhere and without having a fast check-in behind it, and well yes, I spoke with Petro about that.”

To the question asked by the Colombian interviewer to Quesada, if he knows who recorded the audios, the Spanish journalist answers: “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know.” And he adds: “The Colombian secret service had them and was the one who showed them to the President.” He continues: “If not even Leyva knows that who he was eating with has betrayed him and so has Leyva… this if it… I take it for granted, the New York source who says that he met with him in April, or I don’t remember if he told me March, April, I have… I have that doubt right now, I don’t remember by heart, he must know who was there, because of course he made those contacts with the Republicans through someone called Dorotea. I’ve never written this but look, I’ll tell you.”

Madam Attorney General, as you can see, Quesada is once again linking my son. It again places us in New York City. Let it be time to tell you that the last time I was in that city was in 2023, on the occasion of my appearance before the United Nations Security Council, in my capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Since then I have not been present in New York, much less with the supposed company of my son Jorge Leyva. And I remind you: It has already been established that I left your country on January 11. I haven’t been back since.

I continue, Madam Attorney General. Juan Diego Quesada links “someone named Dorotea” to the conspiracy, according to his saying. So deep was his research in that city that he did not know that Dorotea (Dorothy), is my younger sister, American by birth, residing in New York City. Juan Diego Quesada makes a fool of himself when the interviewer of the morning program, Noticias Caracol en Vivo affirms: “OK Dorotea”.

“Yes,” Quesada replies. To which the interviewer affirms, “it is like a link”.

To the latter, Juan Diego Quesada comments: “Yes. Leyva and the son use Dorotea to reach the advisors, although they know the Republicans, but it is a way of introducing themselves in a more … more direct.”

Later on, the interviewer asks Quesada: “Ehhh, is Dorotea a nickname? Or is it the name…”.

Quesada’s response: “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

To end the interview, says the journalist of the Caracol Chain, Mr. Juan

Camilo Cortes: “Very good… Juan Diego Quesada, author of this research. Investigative article from the newspaper El País. Juan Diego, thank you very much, let me confess that it leaves the name of Dorotea in my head.”

Quesada responds: “Okay, okay. I’ll try to clear up that mystery.”

What is certain, Madam Attorney General, is that Juan Diego Quesada took advantage of the time of his alleged investigation in New York City, to be by the side of Mrs. Sandra Lorena Arboleda Zárate, at the time of the birth of their son. He was born on April 11. I refrain from mentioning the child’s name because it is a newborn.

Mrs. Sandra Lorena Arboleda Zárate was appointed as Counselor for Foreign Affairs attached to the Central Consulate General in New York, by Decree No. 0046 of January 20, 2025. Madam Attorney General, the administrative act of appointment is signed by the President of the Republic, Mr. Gustavo Petro. See footer.

It is worth adding that about the successes of his supposed investigation in New York City, Juan Diego Quesada did two additional interviews.  One with journalist Juan Carlos Vélez, YouTube channel B12Radio, and another on the YouTube channel Los Danieles. These interviews are attached in the corresponding footnote.

Madam Attorney General, it is easy to deduce that the journalist so often mentioned, Mr. Juan Diego Quesada and President Gustavo Petro Urrego, would have conspired to leak the fraudulent recordings and manipulate information through the aforementioned newspaper article, published in the international newspaper El País of Madrid, capital city of the Kingdom of Spain, with the purpose of exposing and pointing out advisors of Republican congressmen and congressmen themselves, and even the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, as co-participants in a coup d’état, allegedly promoted by these very high U.S. public officials in collusion with the one who denounces, Álvaro Leyva, at first identified, with Jorge Leyva, identified with the Colombian Citizenship Card No.

80,418,271 and my sister Dorotea Leyva (Mary Dorothy Leyva), a U.S. citizen by birth, born in Manhattan, a neighborhood of New York City.

York, on January 12, 1958, at ST. Clare’s Hospital. Additional IDs for Mary Dorothy (Dorotea): New York State, Identification Card No. 110 818 296, United States Passport No. 570453167.

Madam Attorney General, I can abound in fearful and malicious pronouncements by Mr. Gustavo Petro, aimed at fabricating a conspiracy of mine accompanied by third nationals and U.S. servants with the purpose of seeking an illicit means to bring about his overthrow.

In May of this year, Petro gave two public speeches that demonstrate this. In one, he directly pointed to U.S. Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, of being the alleged manager of a conspiracy, in the company of a “jefe gremial,“ promoting a coup d’état against him. Thus, he links that American public servant to the spawn of a plot.

In a second speech, delivered in the Plaza de Armas of Bogotá, capital city of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro pointed out that the undersigned (Álvaro

Leyva, complainant) is a “decrepit old madman” and that what happened is “a plot. And the plot is not national, it is not of Colombians, although there is

Colombians,” Petro said, “and therefore, it is very dangerous because it is an attack on the sovereignty of Colombia and the freedom of Colombians.” The above was accompanied by a message X after that intervention in which he notes:

“(…), Díaz-Balart, do not try to overthrow the President of Colombia, because you will unleash the Colombian revolution.” This is Mario Diaz-Balart, Representative to the House of the United States. Keep in mind, Madam Attorney General, that the Spanish journalist, Juan Diego Quesada, in his malicious and insulting inventiveness, had already alluded to Diaz-Balart and other Americans such as Representative Giménez, regarding the plot to overthrow Mr. Petro.

Madam Attorney General: Mr. Gustavo Petro’s obsession with accusing Álvaro Leyva (complainant), and high-level American congressmen and public officials of being conspirators is so evident, that he fraudulently publicly insinuated without any blush, that other Colombians would be accomplices of the person who advances this denunciation, in the conspiratorial conduct. Such is the case of Mr. Bruce Mac Master, president of the National Association of Businessmen of Colombia, ANDI, (See footnote) who on August 18 was accused by President Petro of being involved in the alleged

overthrow. (Petro had already referred to a “Jefe Gremial” as a coup plotter). In a post on the social network X he stated the following: “Bruce Mac Master has not clarified why he is mentioned in Leyva’s recordings. Did he dare to collaborate in a coup d’état? The prosecutor’s office should clarify this attempt at sedition for us. (…)”. Look, Madam Attorney General, Petro takes it for granted that there was an attempt at sedition.

Mr. Mac Master in message X of August 18 responds to President Petro as follows: “To Gustavo Petro I propose that we clarify this and many issues to the country.

“I have said publicly and in the media that in fact, Mr. Leyva asked me to meet and told me practically everything that was included in the letters that he later published. I have also said that he is not the only former minister of his, with whom I have spoken. I constantly talk to several.

“Now it is your turn, President, clarify for us all the pending issues you have. If you want, we can make the list together. Cases of corruption that they do not clarify for us, his actions around the functions of the position, public policy decisions far from the technique and the general benefit, attacks on freedom of the press, appointments and dismissals. There are countless issues that the nation deserves to be clarified.

“Now, if you are going to continue accusing me of a crime, you better have substantive reasons to do so, and concrete evidence, because otherwise, we will have to settle it in justice and perhaps not only nationally, but before international organizations, which protect all the rights that you violate when you assume your anti-democratic persecutions,  using their position of institutional power to attack and affect the reputation of many, and put us in danger.”

Madam Attorney General: The letters mentioned in the aforementioned post by Mr. Bruce Mac Master, I will send them to you as soon as possible.  I will also send you what I said as a witness, in my appearance before the Commission of Investigation and Accusation of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the Republic of my country. I was summoned to explain the contents of these letters.

And Gustavo Petro’s desire to continue linking those who today denounce him to you is constant; and he makes U.S. public servants accomplices in a conscious and malicious manner, Madam Attorney General. This is evidenced by what was stated in the recent message X that he released on September 17, which reads as follows: “@petrogustavo -Alvaro Leyva and the decertification. It was already in its recording.” A fallacious lie.

Madam Attorney General: The corrupt intention of the Spanish journalist Juan Diego Quesada, in collusion with Gustavo Petro, President of the Republic of Colombia today, can be measured by the headline of the newspaper El País de Madrid of the Kingdom of Spain, on June 29 of this year. I remind you:

Former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva sought Trump’s complicity in the United States to overthrow Petro

Juan Diego Quesada instrumentalized the important media to put it in the title and affirm in a restrictive way such barbarity. I, Álvaro Leyva, Colombian, hand in hand with the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, acted in a malicious and organized manner to overthrow Gustavo Petro from the presidency?

Regarding the opinion that Mr. Gustavo Petro has of his Head of State, Donald Trump, Madam Attorney General, I would like to attach message X from Mr. Petro. See footer.

****

Madam Attorney General: The damage caused to society in general, to me personally, to my son Jorge Leyva, to my entire family, to my sister Dorotea Leyva (Mary Dorothy), with the accusation made to us by the defendants identified above, either directly or indirectly, and by the newspaper El País de Madrid of the Kingdom of Spain,  of having conspired in the United States of America, in alleged complicity with public servants of his country, including President Donald J. Trump, to carry out a coup d’état in the Republic

of Colombia and the recent decertification (U.S. evaluation of the effectiveness of the Colombian government’s fight against illicit crops and criminal structures), requires all the investigative and sanctioning scopes that allow the application of American norms and local jurisprudence at its disposal.

I add, however, that all of the above is denounced to you, Madam Attorney General, within the framework of the international agreements on judicial cooperation Colombia-United States, since some of the victims are citizens of the United States of America. This does not prevent me from taking the liberty of recalling the rules that I indicate below:

18 U.S.C. § 371 — Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

18 U.S.C. § 1001 — False Statements

18 U.S.C. § 241 — Conspiracy Against Rights

18 U.S.C. § 2 — Aiding and Abetting

Madam Attorney General, I add to the foregoing, by way of recall, that the Supreme Court of the United States, in Branzburg v. Hayes (1972), ruled unequivocally that “the First Amendment does not relieve a newspaper reporter from the obligation to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation.” The Court affirmed that journalists, like all citizens, must provide

evidence of criminal conduct. In addition, in United States v. Sterling (4th Cir. 2013), the court reinforced that a journalist can be compelled to testify about a source when the information relates to the commission of a crime, and the government’s interest in investigating and prosecuting that crime.

Finally, please bear in mind, Madam Attorney General, that for whatever is necessary, I, Álvaro Leyva Durán, in my capacity as complainant, place myself at your entire disposal.

With all due respect and consideration, Madam Attorney General of the United States of America, I subscribe very respectfully.

Above photo: Alvaro Leyva when he was Petro’s foreign minister (courtesy Minexterior)

With 99.04% of tables scrutinized by the Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil, Senator Cepeda earned 1,533,284 votes, representing 65.13% of the valid total. He defeated psychiatrist and former Minister of Health Carolina Corcho, who garnered 676,110 votes (28.72%), and former Mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero, under criminal indictment, who received 144,677 votes (6.14%). Excluding the 385,297 non-marked and null votes, the effective participation stood at approximately 2.35 million valid votes.

Despite Iván Cepeda’s strong showing in the primary, weak turnout may indicate that Colombians are tired of Gustavo Petro’s populist antics and “revolutionary” politics.

The low turnout figure—totaling about 2.7 million, represents a loss of roughly 51% of the coalition’s support when compared to the 5.8 million votes it achieved during the 2022 presidential race.

The voter turnout was considerably less than the 13 million votes cast in the 2016 peace plebiscite—an election that President Gustavo Petro often referenced in his later calls for a failed constituent assembly initiative. The reduced participation, despite this being an open primary election available to any registered voter, underscores a notable decline in voter interest for the coalition’s internal process.

Implications for Daniel Quintero’s Political Future

Despite withdrawing late from the contest, embattled former Medellín Mayor Daniel Quintero’s name remained on the ballot, and his participation could carry legal ramifications for his political career.

Quintero’s late withdrawal is cited as a potential cause for his ineligibility as a candidate in the 2026 elections. According to Colombian electoral law, candidates must resign or step down from posts or public contests by specific deadlines to avoid disqualification from future elections. Once a person is formally inscribed as a pre-candidate in a consultation—even if they later renounce the candidacy—the legal action of participation may remain binding. His low vote count in the primary (6.14%) is unlikely to salvage his political momentum given the potential for a formal declaration of ineligibility.

Scrutiny Over Government Promotion

The election was further complicated by controversy regarding the fine line between promoting democratic participation and engaging in partisan political activity. Public officials were observed issuing messages to encourage voting, which has drawn the attention of control entities.

The Procuraduría General de la Nación is reviewing institutional publications that were disseminated during the voting period. This scrutiny is based on the Colombian Constitution’s Article 127, which prohibits public employees from intervening in partisan politics, except in cases specifically permitted by law, and from using state resources or their official positions to promote partisan causes or candidates.

While the government asserted that its role was confined to strengthening mechanisms of participation—a mission also advanced by the Defensoría del Pueblo—the convergence of an official, state-funded day of democratic promotion with an exclusive consultation by the ruling political movement raises legal questions. The disciplinary review will seek to determine if the government’s messages constituted a general call for participation or an act intended to favor a specific political collective. President Gustavo Petro’s Ministerio del Interior Armando Benedetti has defended the government’s position that institutional engagement was non-partisan.

The designations signal a formal determination by the US Treasury Department that these individuals have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the global illicit drug trade. The action was announced in a Treasury press release detailing the sanctions against the President and his support network, and comes as an escalation in the public spat between Petro and US President Donald Trump.

The Scope of the Designations

Petro with his wife, Veronica Alcocer in Venezuela (Photo: Alexa Rochi, Presidency of Colombia)

The individuals added to the SDN List include:

• PETRO URREGO, Gustavo Francisco (DOB 19 Apr 1960), President of Colombia, designated under the counternarcotics authority of Executive Order 14059.
• ALCOCER GARCIA, Verónica del Socorro (DOB 26 May 1976), President Petro’s wife, designated as linked to Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego.
• PETRO BURGOS, Nicolás Fernando (DOB 21 Jun 1986), President Petro’s son, designated as linked to Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego.
• BENEDETTI VILLANEDA, Armando Alberto (DOB 29 Aug 1967), a former diplomat and high-ranking Colombian official, designated as linked to Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego.

The designations effectively place the individuals in a restrictive financial status typically reserved for terrorists, international criminals, and officials of sanctioned regimes.

The President’s son, Nicolás Petro is already on trial in Colombia by Colombian prosecutors for corruption and dealings with narcotraffickers. Even with his father as president, he has been able to avoid arrest and detention, with his jilted wife, Daysuris Vasquez, serving as a key witness against him.

Petro’s Interior Minister and primary political consigliere, Armando Benedetti has also been sanctioned. Petro’s own former Foreign Minister, Alvaro Leyva has publicly accused the president of being a cocaine addict, while Benedetti has openly admitted that he is a recovering cocaine and alcohol addict.

Immediate Financial and Legal Implications

The designation to the SDN List carries defined and severe consequences under US law, primarily centered on financial blocking:

The sanctions imposed on Petro, his family, & Benedetti are commonly known as being added to “the Clinton List.”

1. Asset Blocking: All property and interests in property of the four designated individuals that are within US jurisdiction, or that come within the possession or control of any US person, are immediately blocked (frozen). This requires US financial institutions and entities to report the blockage of funds, real estate, securities, or other assets to OFAC.
2. Transaction Prohibition: US persons—a category that includes US citizens and permanent residents, entities organized under US laws (and their foreign branches), and any person located within the United States—are prohibited from engaging in any transaction or dealing with the designated individuals. This prohibition extends to making or receiving any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of an SDN.
3. The 50 Percent Rule: Any entity owned, directly or indirectly, 50% or more by one or more of the designated individuals is also considered blocked, regardless of whether that entity is explicitly named on the SDN List.

Furthermore, the names are integrated into global compliance screening databases used by most international banks and financial institutions. This development is expected to isolate the designated individuals from the global financial system, making routine actions such as international wire transfers, opening bank accounts, and using credit services highly problematic or impossible.

Impact on Petro’s Future

The SDN designations carry different risks based on the current and future governmental status of the designated officials.

Current Term (Until August 2026)

President Gustavo Petro posing for a photo with his son Nicolás Petro. (Credit: Presidencia de la Republica)

While President Petro holds his position, official governmental dealings between the US and Colombia may continue, potentially protected by principles of sovereign immunity. However, the designation is applied to him as an individual for illicit activities, not in his capacity as head of state.

• Official Duties: US government agencies and diplomats are restricted from conducting personal or financial transactions with the President, which complicates interactions beyond the necessary official capacity.
• Personal Finances: Any personal US-based assets the four individuals may have are blocked. Their personal finances and travel outside of Colombia become subject to severe scrutiny, as non-US financial institutions that engage in transactions with him risk being targeted by secondary sanctions.
• Previous Visa Status: This financial sanction follows a previous action where President Petro’s US visa was revoked earlier this year after he called on the US military to rebel while participating in a pro-Palestine protest in New York. The SDN designation solidifies his inability to travel to the United States and extends the US financial prohibition globally.
• Petro’s wife, son, and Armando Alberto Benedetti face the full immediate weight of the financial sanctions, including total blocking of any US assets and prohibition of transactions with US persons.

Post Presidency

When President Petro’s term ends in August 2026, he and his family will lose any residual protections or considerations afforded by his presidential office.

• Total Isolation: The post-term status is expected to result in complete global financial isolation for all four individuals. Without the shield of public office, any attempt to conduct legitimate business, investment, or banking internationally would be flagged and rejected by compliance systems worldwide due to the fear of secondary sanctions against foreign entities.
• Legal Exposure: The designations are intended to prevent the designated individuals from utilizing the international financial system. Any attempt by the sanctioned persons to circumvent these restrictions after leaving office could result in further investigations and potential criminal charges by US authorities.

Update: Dueling official statements

Friday afternoon, the Colombian & US governments issued the following diplomatic statements (Colombian statement translated to English by Finance Colombia):

US Department of State

U.S. Decision Not to Certify Colombia’s Counternarcotics Efforts and Sanctions Actions Against Colombian Officials Involved in Global Illicit Drug Trade

Due to President Gustavo Petro’s disastrous and ineffective counternarcotics policies, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not certify Colombia under the criteria of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024, as carried forward by the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025.  President Trump made it clear in his September 15 determination [on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2026] that Colombia is “failing demonstrably” to uphold its drug control responsibilities.  Petro has since doubled down in defense of his failed policies.

The United States will not turn a blind eye to Petro’s appeasement and emboldening of narco-terrorists.  We are committed to bringing terrorists and drug traffickers to justice and preventing deadly illegal drugs from entering our country.  There must be no impunity for drug traffickers or acts of terrorism or violence by criminal armed groups.

We remain steadfast in our support for Colombian security forces, its justice sector, and departmental and municipal officials, and we will continue to partner with them in our joint efforts to combat drug trafficking.  Today’s decision is not a reflection on these institutions but rather the failures and incompetence of Gustavo Petro and his inner circle.

In addition to today’s announcement of the decision not to certify Colombia, the United States, through the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), is sanctioning four Colombian nationals, including President Gustavo Petro, Petro’s wife Veronica, his son Nicolás, and Minister of Interior Armando Benedetti for their involvement in the global illicit drug trade.  Narcotics trafficking and narcoterrorism continues to fuel violence, corruption, and instability in Colombia, while also posing significant challenges to regional and international security.

Today’s announcement concerns a decision not to certify Colombia for certain FY2025 assistance under section 7045(c)(3)(A) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024 (Div. F, P.L. 118-47), as carried forward by the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025 (Div. A, P.L. 119-4).  Today’s designation actions were taken pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 14059, which targets the international proliferation of illicit drugs and their means of production.  For more information about today’s designations, please see Treasury’s press release.

Colombia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Cancillería)

The Colombian Foreign Ministry once again rejects the unfriendly actions of the United States.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its strong rejection of the inclusion of the President of the Republic of Colombia, Gustavo Petro Urrego, his family, and the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, on the List of Specially Designated Nationals, updated today by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury. This decision is completely unfounded and constitutes an affront to the President of Colombia, the highest administrative authority and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and to the entire Colombian people. 

The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemns the offensive and outrageous statements made by Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, against the Colombian President, which also constitute an insult to someone who has maintained a frontal and tireless fight against drug trafficking for more than three decades, and who has achieved during his administration the largest seizures of illicit drugs in recent history, thanks to a policy defined by him and under his orders as Commander-in-Chief of the Public Force, aimed at comprehensively combating the scourge of drugs.

The OFAC decision and the insulting treatment the President has received in recent days violate not only his honor, but also the memory of the thousands of Colombians who have sacrificed their lives in the fight against drug trafficking.

These hostile acts, which not only insult but also disregard the fight against drug trafficking waged by President Gustavo Petro Urrego, the Armed Forces, and Colombian society, do nothing to normalize diplomatic relations between the two countries.

For Colombia, the strategic relationship with the United States is governed by a vision of the State, independent of the current political cycles of each country, and is based on the close economic, social, and cultural ties built over more than two centuries of collaborative work. The Colombian people expect the United States government to value and respect its relationship with Colombia in the same way other nations do with our country. 

Headline image: Colombian President Gustavo Petro (left) with Interior Minister Armando Benedetti (photo: Presidency of Colombia)

President Petro called for a criminal investigation against President Donald Trump, which stunned many observers. The demand stemmed from a US military operation in the Caribbean, where missiles were fired at vessels suspected of illicit activities. Petro asserted that the occupants were not traffickers but “simply poor young people from Latin America who have no other option.” The US delegation reportedly exited the assembly hall during Petro’s speech.

“With the forgiveness of those who dominate the United Nations, criminal proceedings must be opened against those officials from the United States, including the senior official who gave the order: President Trump,” Petro declared. He also framed his speech from the position of a leader wronged by US policy, stating, “I speak to you as a president decertified by the same President Trump, without him having the right to do so.”

Gustavo Petro at the UN. Photo credit: Juan Diego Cano -Presidency.

The Colombian president’s remarks extended to broad condemnations, labeling the United States a “white and racist” country leading humanity toward “destruction.” His confrontational rhetoric was not limited to the US, as he also defended Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and controversially downplayed the nature of the transnational criminal organization, Tren de Aragua.

Petro seemed to call for an armed invasion of Palestine and against Israel:

“I invite the nations of the world and their peoples above all, as part of humanity, to unite their armies and weapons.

Palestine must be liberated. I invite the armies of Asia, of the Slavic peoples who so heroically defeated Hitler, the Latin American armies of Bolívar, of Garibaldi, who also had one in Italy, of Martí, of Artigas, of Santa Cruz. Words are no longer necessary in Bolívar’s hour of the sword of freedom or death, because they will not only bomb Gaza, not only the Caribbean, as they already do, but also humanity that cries out for freedom, because from Washington and NATO, they are killing democracy and reviving tyranny and totalitarianism on a global level.

We must raise the red and black flag of freedom or death that Bolívar raised, without forgetting the white color he raised alongside the red and black, the color of peace as hope for life on earth and in the heart of humanity. The United States no longer teaches democracy; instead, it kills it with its migrants and its greed. The United States teaches tyranny.

The UN must begin its change by stopping the genocide in Gaza with the effectiveness of a world-saving army, voted on by the United Nations General Assembly without veto. After saving Gaza, we will move on to the plan to decarbonize the planet’s economy, so that it becomes a democratically constructed global project and establishes global democracy.”

Widespread Condemnation from Colombian Opposition

The reaction from Colombia’s political opposition was swift and severe. Lawmakers from various parties accused Petro of embarrassing the nation on the world stage and irresponsibly damaging crucial diplomatic ties.

Lina María Garrido, a representative from the Cambio Radical party, offered a direct rebuke: “In the name of the majority of Colombians, I offer an apology to the world for the shameful spectacle that Gustavo Petro is putting on at the UN.”

En nombre de la mayoría de los colombianos, le ofrezco disculpas al mundo por el bochornoso espectáculo que está dando @petrogustavo en la ONU. De entrada, les quiero informar que Petro está dispuesto a todo por unos cuantos "me gusta" en sus redes y por tener un reconocimiento,…

— Lina Maria Garrido (@linamariagarri1) September 23, 2025

Representative Katherine Miranda from the Alianza Verde party described the speech as “Ideologized, erratic, and highly confrontational against the US and Europe. He said nothing about Colombia, about the increase in homicides of public forces, recruitment of minors, kidnappings, and extortions.”

“President Petro didn’t speak like a head of state. He didn’t even wear the Colombian flag on his shirt. He’s only interested in the presidency as a podium, a platform to repeat his apocalyptic rhetoric, denounce universal greed, and launch a vapid call for a global revolution. He doesn’t care about his country. ‘Global leader,’ every state office repeats, while the president speaks to an empty audience,” said Petro’s own former education minister, Alejandro Gaviria.

Senator Carlos Fernando Motoa of Cambio Radical suggested Petro was acting as a defender for criminal syndicates. “Now he goes to the United Nations to act as a defender of the Cartel de los Soles, or organizations like Tren de Aragua,” Motoa stated. “This is unprecedented conduct that threatens to destroy our international image and put us on the side of the worst regimes on the continent.”

¡Lo de @PetroGustavo ya es patológico! No sólo defiende criminales con tarimazos en Medellín o mediante políticas infructuosas como la #PazTotal en el resto del territorio colombiano. Ahora acude a las Naciones Unidas para hacer las veces de defensor del Cártel de los Soles u… https://t.co/Qc4hkx1aqc

— Carlos Fernando Motoa (@senadormotoa) September 23, 2025

The criticism continued from Daniel Briceño, a Bogotá councilman for the Centro Democrático party, who posted on X, formerly Twitter, “Fortunately, this is the last time Petro will embarrass Colombia before the UN.”

Petro es un activista de micrófono cobarde y mediocre.

Mientras viaja por el mundo tratando de “solucionar” los problemas de la humanidad, en Colombia se arrodilla ante los peores criminales, los nombra gestores de paz y se acobarda ante la delincuencia.

Apátrida

— Daniel F. Briceño (@Danielbricen) September 26, 2025

Governor of Antioquia, Andrés Julián Rendón, sharply criticized Petro’s assessment of Tren de Aragua. Petro had claimed, “It’s a lie that the Tren de Aragua is a terrorist. They are just common criminals in the form of a gang, enlarged by the stupid idea of blockading Venezuela and keeping its oil.” Rendón retorted that Petro acted “more like an ambassador and spokesman for the narco-dictatorship of his ally Maduro and its criminal structures, than as the representative of millions of Colombians.”

Qué irresponsabilidad la suya Presidente @petrogustavo. Es sabido que le quedó grande gobernar, pero disimule y preocúpese por combatir a Mordisco, Calarcá, Clan de Golfo y cuanto bandido con el que está negociando. Son criminales peligrosos para el pueblo colombiano: desplazan,… pic.twitter.com/X2YvuMd55P

— Andrés Julián (@AndresJRendonC) September 26, 2025

Math professor and former mayor of Medellín and governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo, called Petro’s words “lamentable.”

“President Petro’s performance at the United Nations General Assembly was, once again, lamentable. Trapped in his personal demons and delusions, instead of acting rationally in the country’s interests, the president reiterated his childish confrontation with Trump. Petro stopped governing a while ago and dedicated himself to campaigning, faithful to his anything-goes philosophy. The chaos grows day by day. He will leave, and we will all pay the bill. And what’s missing,” Fajardo tweeted on X.

El espectáculo del presidente Petro en la asamblea general de las naciones unidas fue, de nuevo, lamentable. Atrapado en sus demonios y delirios personales, en lugar de actuar racionalmente en función de los intereses del país, el presidente reiteró su infantil enfrentamiento con…

— Sergio Fajardo (@sergio_fajardo) September 24, 2025

Current senator and aspirant to the 2026 presidential elections, Paloma Valencia, said that Gustavo Petro has surrendered Colombia to violent actors. He has done nothing against drugs. Under him, Colombia has seen its lowest seizures in 12 years, homicides have increased by 8%, kidnappings have doubled, and extortion has skyrocketed. He has handed over the territory to the violent.”

Administration Defends “Disruptive” Speech

Members of Petro’s cabinet staunchly defended his address. Interior Minister Armando Benedetti praised the president’s words as a “courageous and historic intervention with a lot of dignity,” arguing that few leaders have the moral authority to speak so candidly.

Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio stated that Petro’s speech was “disruptive in the sense that he has said what many people think but do not dare to say.” She highlighted his critiques of migration policies that criminalize migrants and his call for a new approach to the global drug problem that addresses consumer countries’ roles.

Ex-Diplomat Warns of “Explosive” Consequences

Providing a more measured analysis, former Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo described Petro’s declarations as “quite explosive” in an interview with BLU Radio. While acknowledging the president’s apparent frustration near the end of his term, Murillo warned that such a stance “strains the relationship with the United States a great deal.”

Murillo emphasized the need for pragmatism in a volatile global environment, noting that a country’s capacity for maneuver is more critical than being right. “Colombia has to be very pragmatic in managing its relations with the United States,” he urged, pointing to the deep historical, economic, and social ties between the two nations. He suggested the speech could have been an opportunity to evaluate progress on his administration’s established foreign policy goals rather than seeking to assign blame.

The former chancellor also found the public discussion on the nature of Tren de Aragua unhelpful, arguing that such matters are best handled through technical and intelligence channels. The fallout from the speech continues to unfold, leaving Colombia’s political landscape deeply divided and its foreign policy at a critical juncture.

Petro’s full, translated UN speeches follow:

New York, September 23, 2025

Mr. Speaker, this is my last speech as President here. It’s already my fourth. In my first, I announced to the Assembly that a conflict could very well break out alongside Ukraine in Palestine. I called for a peace conference.

Those of us without bombs or big budgets are not heard here, but four years later, today, the horrific situation in Palestine led me to think that the same thing, or almost the same thing, could happen in the Colombian Caribbean, when they throw missiles at unarmed young people in the sea.

So now we are facing a different situation, perhaps more global. The barbarism today is global; today it falls upon all of humanity. The missiles targeted 17 unarmed young people in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, perhaps some Colombians. The persecution, imprisonment, chaining, and expulsion of millions of migrants. The missiles that fall on the 70,000 people in Gaza and kill them.

The lack of action on the climate crisis, whose words are being erased at Trump’s orders, is linked to and responds to the same cause. Migration is an excuse for a rich, white, racist society to believe itself a superior race and ignore the fact that its leaders are leading it, along with all of humanity, to the abyss of its own extinction.

They say the missiles in the Caribbean were to stop drugs. That’s a lie. Said here, on this very spot, in 2023 and 2024, were the years in which the most cocaine was seized, and more than 700 drug lords were extradited to the United States and Europe. I extradited them, and my government seized the cocaine.

And we didn’t fire a single missile or kill any young people. These were years in which I proved that voluntary substitution with coca leaf crops is more effective than forcibly eradicating them with glyphosate and using force on Colombia’s poor farmers. I replaced the failed and violent war on drugs with an effective anti-drug policy, which is different from confusing the dead substance with the greedy person.

But they need violence to dominate Colombia and Latin America. They need to destroy dialogue and impose and launch deadly missiles on poor young people in the Caribbean. Anti-drug policy is not about stopping cocaine from reaching the United States.

Anti-drug policy is intended to dominate the people of the South in general. It doesn’t focus on drugs; it focuses on power and domination. That’s why I speak before you as a president deserted by President Trump himself, without any right to do so, neither human nor divine, and without any mental reason.

They want to violate and coerce tens of thousands of farmers from the United States government, which is influenced by powerful Colombian mafia politicians.

Hundreds of thousands of Colombian peasants have been massacred, just as children are massacred in Gaza.

The massacres in Colombia were carried out by politicians who were senators, presidents, and ministers, linked to and bribed by the Colombian drug mafia.

At once allied with the far right in Florida, in the United States, and now allied with the Trump administration, allies for decades with the cocaine drug lords in Colombia—true scumbags, as the Italians say.

Anti-drug policy is made in Washington, United States, by allies of the cocaine mafia. I don’t know if Trump knows that his foreign policy toward Colombia, Venezuela, and the Caribbean is advised by Colombians who are political allies of the cocaine mafia.

I myself denounced these drug-trafficking paramilitary politicians personally, and for a decade in Congress as a senator. They tried to kill me many times for it. They wanted me not to be president and to keep me quiet, and now they want to prevent a new progressive government from continuing. And because of that, they almost denigrate me personally and slander Colombia.

The largest amount of cocaine in the history of the world has been seized in Colombia, and this government did it, and they’re making me a desert.

In Colombia, we have managed to stop the growth rate, the growth rate of coca leaf crops, which was 43% annually during the government of (President Iván) Duque, and I have lowered it this year to 3%, and they did not desertify Duque, who had a drug trafficker financier in his campaign, but they did desertify Petro, because he says things and says the truth.

Therefore, anti-drug policy is not for the public health of society but for the politics of power. They don’t want light to shine in Latin America and for the time of the people to come again. The young people killed by missiles in the Caribbean were not from the Aragua train—perhaps no one here knows its name—or from Hamas; they were Caribbean, possibly Colombian.

And if they were Colombians, with the apologies of those who dominate the United Nations, criminal proceedings should be opened against those officials who are from the United States, even if the highest-ranking official who gave the order, President Trump, who allowed the missiles to be fired at young people who simply wanted to escape poverty, is included. Young people on a boat, if they had an illicit cargo, weren’t drug traffickers; they were simply poor young people from Latin America who had no other option.

Drug traffickers live somewhere else, not in Latin America. Trump launches missiles at unarmed boats of immigrants and accuses them of being drug traffickers and terrorists, even though they don’t have a single weapon to defend themselves. Drug traffickers live in New York, right here, just a few blocks away, and in Miami.

And they make agreements with the (Drug Enforcement Administration) DEA, which allows them to traffic in Africa, Europe, Russia or China but not in the United States, a country that stops the growth of cocaine consumption without reducing it, only because its sick drug addicts went –and are sick– to consume the deadly drug of humanity’s counterculture in times of extinction due to the climate crisis, fentanyl.

This fentanyl is produced in the United States’ industrial apparatus, here, near here, and for consumers, it’s American self-consumption, resulting in the worst understanding of drugs in human history since we first knew wine, alcohol, or beer.

Fentanyl and gasoline addicts: the total poisons of life in the world. Gasoline is worse than fentanyl.

Only the Black people here, ancestral here, more than 20,000 years old, the youth, the women who don’t want to see their children die en masse; white, Black, of all colors who still think, people who still think, who don’t sleep under fentanyl or under lying television, and who can stop the tyranny within the United States itself.

And around the world, citizens are taking to the streets in California, in New York, in Philadelphia, where the bell of liberty was rung despite the armies Trump sends against his own people to intimidate them, in the states of free citizens, in the same states that are no longer united today in the face of the tyranny of evil, of the worst kind, the president of the United States.

Don’t they see that a million Latin Americans have been murdered among themselves, the majority of them Colombians? And another million Americans will die from fentanyl.

Ten years ago, cocaine killed 3,000 people a year in this country, due to poisons mixed with it. Today, fentanyl kills 100,033 times more. The United States has improved—or worsened—with 50 years of absurd policies, and is leading its society to the Dantesque death of the drug that kills the brain and lungs in this death of humanity.

Genocide in Gaza

Trump not only lets missiles fall on young people in the Caribbean, but also imprisons and chains migrants, and allows missiles to be launched at young children, women, and the elderly in Gaza. He makes himself complicit in genocide because it is genocide, and we must shout it out again and again.

This building is a silent witness, and an accomplice, to a genocide in today’s world. When we thought it was Hitler’s sole property, Trump doesn’t talk about democracy, he doesn’t talk about the climate crisis, he doesn’t talk about life; he only threatens and kills, and allows tens of thousands to be killed.

However, during my administration in Colombia, we haven’t increased the homicide rate. We have the lowest unemployment rate of the century in the country, we have the lowest poverty rate of the century according to our statistics, and we boosted our agriculture to 10% annual growth, and our industry to 5% annually, and tourists came like never before, by the millions, to admire our immense beauty.

In a land of beauty and natural, human, and cultural diversity, we seek peace by talking with drug traffickers and rebels. I’m not ashamed to talk, always talking to save lives, putting as a principle the total eradication of illicit economies and the eradication of coca leaf crops by the very will of the peasants who are tired of the violence.

We don’t allow ourselves to be bribed by drug traffickers, as happened under previous Colombian governments, and we’ve already voluntarily eradicated 25,000 hectares. We’re successful in our new policy, which isn’t about drugs, but rather about drug trafficking, which is different.

We are grateful to the countries that have helped us sow peace: Qatar, Cuba, Mexico, the Vatican City, Norway, Brazil, and Venezuela. We are not grateful to those who want to lead us to war among ourselves.

Listen, ladies and gentlemen of the world, Latin America is not just about cocaine, terrorists, or drug traffickers. Latin America potentially has 1,400 gigabytes of clean electric energy capacity annually based on water, wind, and the sun. The United States, in the north, demands 1,200 gigabytes of energy every year, which today is 70% fossil fuels, that is, based on coal, gas, and oil.

If Latin America develops its clean energy potential, it could clean up the entire United States’ fossil energy mix. Listen, all that’s missing is the money, and it would make the greatest contribution to overcoming the climate crisis.

Today, with almost no progress between the potential for clean energy and the enormous absorbent sponge of the Amazon rainforest, Latin America is the vanguard of humanity that could take the first decisive step toward saving the planet and all humanity. It only takes $600 billion to develop its potential.

Africa can do the same with Europe. The sum of this fundamental decarbonization aspect would give us $1 trillion 200 billion—or $1.2 trillion USD, as they say in English. This money is already in the coffers of the United States, Europe, and China, but not a single dollar is moving profitably.

Or worse, it may still be very profitable in terms of human life, including life in the United States, Europe, and China, but they don’t want to become interdependent with Latin America and Africa. They know that linking clean energy from Latin America and Africa to the fossil fuel economies of the North not only decarbonizes the planet and saves it from climate collapse, but also shifts global power.

The one who speaks here sometimes, but speaks every day, is doing so with bombs and not with words. Decarbonization is returning, a global democracy is returning to power, and the relations of production are changing, because life and humanity come first, taking priority over greed.

Greed is the poison of life; it is an antagonistic contradiction, as Mao Zedong (Chinese politician, philosopher, intellectual, military strategist, founder of the Communist Party and the Republic of China) once said, but not thinking about bosses and workers, but between greed and the very life of planet Earth.

According to science, we have 10 years to reach the point of no return. 10 years, and once we reach that point, nothing can be done. We will only observe the catastrophes and feel them, even in our own families, because it will be, because it will be, if you can tell me, irreversible, the extinction of life, including human life.

Irreversibility of the process, no technology, no political or social force, no human mind will be able to do anything to stop the collapse and we have 10 years left, says science, but here they don’t believe in science, said one of the most powerful in the world, they don’t believe in science and that is called irrationalism and Germany, the country of great philosophers, of Feuerbach, of Hegel, of Kant, was philosophically filled with irrationalism.

And today, the United States is being filled with irrationalism, and it was the prelude to Hitler in 1933.

The solution is to stop consuming coal, oil, gas, hydrocarbons, and quickly move to water, sun, green hydrogen, wind, but the word decarbonization now sounds subversive at the conferences of powerful groups of countries, the G7, the G20, and in Davos (Switzerland), the mega-rich, just as the word democracy sounded subversive five centuries ago.

Investing in decarbonization

Even here, in New York, Cartagena, Bogotá, or Paris, and even more so in Madrid, the sums I’m talking about here—$600 billion, $1 trillion, $200 billion—are one or two zeros higher than the amount promised by developed countries.

Giving and it’s alms and they haven’t complied since the COP in Paris, because they’re not interested in decarbonization and the excessive figure on the meager loans from multilateral banks is between zeros, which are just that, pure innocuous alms, pure ideology thinking that the profitability of capital cleans the atmosphere and saves lives, lies, ideological, phantasmagorical, fetishes so that we don’t look up and don’t act as humanity.

The climate crisis requires prioritizing investment in decarbonization and adaptation in all public budgets. It requires a completely different global financial policy and the abolition of the debt risk premium.

Whoever said that countries that emit the most greenhouse gases, like this one, the second or first on Earth, are risky rather than not risky, and that countries that absorb CO2 and have jungles and lots of water and absorb CO2 from the north in the south are risky, because the market says otherwise, if not, it is because it is wrong and is heading towards the abyss of life.

We need to forgive debt in the poorest countries and exchange foreign debt payments for investment in climate crisis adaptation and mitigation. Gentlemen of China, Germany, the United States, Wall Street, Paris, and the London Stock Exchange, if you want to collect the interest on our countries’ foreign debt, you will find cemeteries and dead bodies, and when you go to collect it, you too will find cemeteries and dead bodies. That money is of no use amidst corpses.

Here is another subversive word: plan, global plan. The word was forgotten by the market. Planning was not necessary, they said. When planning is for human beings, it is anathema. So much religious and false belief was unleashed on the market, a fundamentalist belief that the market led to happiness, said Walras, the Swiss economist, and the abyss.

But what the market leads to is not happiness, but death and the abyss, as we see it today. Walras was wrong, neoliberalism was wrong from the start, and we’ve been guiding our countries for 50 years under completely erratic and unscientific formulas, and we haven’t changed them.

The plan must be binding on nation states, carried out in a global democracy, supervised in its compliance by the Security Council, without veto, because let us know that the market does not solve the climate crisis, let us know it once and for all, because it was capital itself that produced it – which is an unequal human relationship between those who are the owners of the coal and oil-hungry machine and the salaried worker, man or woman, who has to produce more and more things for the boss to sell – those things made with the boss’s machine that needs more and more oil, which produced the climate crisis.

Make more, sell more, earn more, more and more, and use more and more, then, coal and oil until today, but not until eternity, because oil and coal have reached their end, which, perhaps, is the end of capital. If not of capital, then of humanity and life.

So, the owner of capital is a powerful human being, and he’s not a thing, he’s not a fetish. That human being, with his greed, with his total enslavement to greed, is the one who will seek approval here, the search for ever more oil, the search for ever more oil in every country, regardless of the poisoning of the atmosphere with CO2, which is the poisoning of all life on the planet.

Drill, drill, and drill, they say, without mercy. So, capital or life, my friends, or greed or life, or barbarism or local and global democracy, or freedom or death, as Bolívar said, and raised this red, black, and also white flag: freedom, red, death, black, white, peace.

World Revolution

A global revolution of the people is possible. What is needed to positively overcome the climate crisis and prevent it from spiraling from crisis to global collapse is a revolution of united peoples, of civilizations, who must engage in dialogue more than the states themselves. It is a revolution of humanity to remain alive on the planet and free, perhaps, allied with some governments that want to defend life today.

The United Nations sees its crisis and the need for its transformation. Here, nation-states that no longer have power gather, and no matter how much they vote, they are ignored, because the nation-state has also reached its decline, perhaps its final one.

It was invented some centuries ago and it no longer works, and it no longer works because capital itself became global, not state-based. The socialism of (Joseph) Stalin (Soviet politician, military man, revolutionary, and dictator) should have become global and not state-based, but Stalin did not have the understanding for it and believed more in the tribe and condemned in Yalta a world revolution in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and perhaps it would have been Latin America and others.

Humanity is the new political subject that appears, not the nation-state, and therefore, the United Nations must return and transform into a united, although diverse, humanity. A new political subject is appearing in human history, and it is important, and it seems spectacular to me, and it is that we are overcoming the idea of ​​the nation-state to become humanity.

But for humanity to be united and united in action, it must have democracy throughout the world; it must have permanent dialogue amidst diversity. It is the difference that drives us to the possibility of effective coordination of action on a global scale—humanity in dialogue.

Yes, civil humanity, yes, profoundly democratic humanity, yes, hopefully, a humanity of free people, which is its definition, its synonym, because there can be no such thing as enslaved humanity. Enslaved humanity is not humanity; it is beastly. Beastly is the one who enslaves, chains migrants, launches missiles at young people, and riddles children with missiles in a town very close to where Jesus was born.

This can no longer be resolved by states that talk but don’t act; it can’t be resolved by rulers bribed by oil and ready to launch missiles at the peoples of the South. A new political entity then emerges: humanity united and diverse in its cultures. While collapse approaches, and while the old, white societies of Europe and the United States continue to applaud their new, fashionable Hitlers, they listen neither to their youth, nor to their children, nor to humanity, nor to the stars, nor to their grandparents who died as heroes in the fields of Europe, truly fighting against Hitler and his criminal idea of ​​a superior race.

Today, they do the same thing Hitler did: they build concentration camps for migrants and applaud electoral majorities, saying migrants are an inferior race, collectivizing blame on them, as they did with the Jews, calling them terrorists, inferior, and thieves—all drug traffickers, they say. When most drug traffickers are blond and blue-eyed, and keep their enormous fortunes in the world’s largest banks, they don’t live in Bogotá, Caracas, the Caribbean, or Gaza, but in Miami, they are neighbors of the President of the United States, and they live in New York, Paris, Madrid, and Dubai. They live where there is luxury, not poverty, yet they fire missiles where there is poverty, not where there is luxury. It’s a lie that the Aragua train is a terrorist organization; they’re just common criminals in the form of a gang, swelled by the stupid idea of ​​blockading Venezuela and seizing its heavy, already poisonous oil.

Migrants are not criminals; they don’t need to be taken to concentration camps and expelled in chains. Migration is merely a product of the blockade against poorer countries like Iraq, Iran, Cuba, or Venezuela. The economic blockade is nothing less than genocide.

Migration is nothing more than the product of the impoverishment of the poorest countries due to unpayable and greedy debt. Migration is nothing more than the consequence of the wars and oil-fueled invasions unleashed by the United States and the European continent. Migration is nothing more than the consequence of the climate crisis, which is heading toward collapse and leaving tropical lands without water because the vital liquid evaporates as the heat increases.

The migration solution is nothing other than, or very different from, chains, prisons, or missiles. There is no superior race, gentlemen. There is no God’s chosen people.

Neither the United States nor Israel. Ignorant far-right fundamentalists think this way. God’s chosen people are all of humanity.

They use migration as an excuse to do nothing about the climate crisis that wipes out life every day. They leverage migration to win votes from whites and older men and women, but they hide the need to end coal and oil consumption from power, and they incentivize drilling and drilling and drilling. The UN needs to change now.

A different, humane UN must first and foremost stop the genocide in Gaza. Humanity cannot allow another day of genocide, nor can it allow Netanyahu’s genocidaires and his allies in the United States and Europe to go free. The United Nations must uphold international courts of justice, international law, which is the foundation of civilization and the wisdom of humanity encapsulated in history, and must enforce the judgment of its justice.

Diplomacy has already played its part, gentlemen, in the case of Gaza. It couldn’t solve it. It’s not true, and I apologize, Macron, that we can insist and insist on talking and talking when every second a missile falls and destroys the bodies of innocent babies, baby boys and baby girls, in the Arab country of Palestine.

Every day, emotions are vetoed in the UN Security Council; every day that passes, more children are bombed, every time you take bombs, every time you take dead people. The one who vetoes what he thinks is not a mother, is not a father, is not alive, perhaps comes from dark forces, is a robot because he has no heart to veto. The genocide must stop with what follows diplomacy.

It’s like a vote of the United Nations Assembly, not a vote of the Security Council, which vetoes. It’s like a United for Peace for Palestine, forming an armed force to defend the lives of the Palestinian people. It’s about words and weapons today.

They are not blue helmets, untrained and sometimes unwilling to do what they need. They are a powerful army of countries that do not accept genocide. Therefore, I invite the nations of the world and their peoples above all, as part of humanity, to unite their armies and weapons.

Palestine must be liberated. I invite the armies of Asia, of the Slavic peoples who so heroically defeated Hitler, the Latin American armies of Bolívar, of Garibaldi, who also had one in Italy, of Martí, of Artigas, of Santa Cruz. Words are no longer necessary in Bolívar’s hour of the sword of freedom or death, because they will not only bomb Gaza, not only the Caribbean, as they already do, but also humanity that cries out for freedom, because from Washington and NATO, they are killing democracy and reviving tyranny and totalitarianism on a global level.

We must raise the red and black flag of freedom or death that Bolívar raised, without forgetting the white color he raised alongside the red and black, the color of peace as hope for life on earth and in the heart of humanity. The United States no longer teaches democracy; instead, it kills it with its migrants and its greed. The United States teaches tyranny.

The UN must begin its change by stopping the genocide in Gaza with the effectiveness of a world-saving army, voted on by the United Nations General Assembly without veto. After saving Gaza, we will move on to the plan to decarbonize the planet’s economy, so that it becomes a democratically constructed global project and establishes global democracy. The body overseeing its rapid implementation will be the Security Council, but without vetoes. It will be binding on the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private financial system, given the enormous capacity of the national and global financial system to centralize capital. It is from there that humanity can regulate capital to subordinate it to life and humanity—a capital regulated and subordinated to life and people.

Along this path, the United Nations will transition from an alliance of states to an alliance of diverse peoples and cultures that make up humanity. If we overcome the climate crisis, and we will only do so united as humanity, we will also achieve the United Nations’ transition toward an assembly of peoples, seeking to ensure that every person on the planet is free, seeking to ensure that the minds of every person reach their full potential and interconnect on the planet, because that great mind of humanity, as a powerful intelligence, illuminated by ever-deepening science, will be able not only to save life on the planet but also to fulfill humanity’s mission, expanding life to the stars. A united and free humanity can look to the stars and reach them, just as the Roman legionaries once thought, back when they invented the Latin words ad astra, ad astra to the stars, always in the hour of freedom or death. And death in missiles is real, but so is freedom in the human heart and its capacity for unity, rebellion, and existence.

Thank you very much.

New York (United States), September 24, 2025

Let’s say that, listening to (US President Donald) Trump’s speech yesterday, I remembered an old writer, from the 20th century, who died in 1971, his name was Gyorgy Lukács. Gyorgy was Hungarian and had been involved in the Hungarian revolution back in the 1920s. And he went through, like all intellectuals of that time, Nazi persecution.

And in 1954, he wrote a book called ‘The Assault on Reason.’ I was just talking about it with economist Jeffrey Sachs, who’s here too. Greetings to Joseph Stiglitz.

‘The assault on reason’ is the intellectual idea of ​​writing about how a social thought evolves in society and in these Nazi configurations that existed before 1933, which gives way to the emergence of (Adolf) Hitler in 1933, how some liberals of the Weimar Republic (a German city) decide to hand over power to him, because Hitler was never a majority or was not an electoral majority at that time, the electoral majority was social democrat and communist, divided and killing each other.

The Social Democrats of that time also shot Rosa Luxemburg in the 1920s; later, that division led to the rise of Hitler, but in addition to the political circumstances, there was also a mental circumstance in society, a kind of impotence in allowing irrationalism to take over the intellectual space in a country like Germany, which boasted of having the best philosophers in the world.

Last night, well yesterday, what I saw was that very thing.

In Trump’s speech, and I’ve asked many American citizens I’ve met here, what is the state of American society? Well, we know ours, but here, in a relatively libertarian city like New York, the center of enormous struggles in the past and still today, or California, etc., because if American society moves toward irrationalism, which is what Trump called for, not science, not reason, the assault on reason, then we are in circumstances predating widespread barbarism.

And in light of that, let’s say, if one goes back and looks at these totalitarian proposals throughout history, they have almost always been based on two axes: people’s fear and lies.

(Joseph) Goebbels is a lie. Today, the media is in the hands of big capital, a lie about the possibility of a much more brutal, much more brutal Artificial Intelligence, in terms of information manipulation. If knowledge, which they call the cloud, which is the general intellect of humanity throughout history accumulated here in the present, is privatized—and there’s a reason Trump was on his inauguration day alongside Mr. Elon Musk and the owner of Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), Microsoft (Bill Gates), etc.—then there’s a pending discussion here, which is global: Will there be private owners of the cloud, that is, of humanity’s accumulated intellect, digitized? Or will it be a global public domain? And that’s a first point of discussion that, I think, Europe can help us a lot with, more than we ourselves, who haven’t developed this topic much.

But this issue of lies and truth is a battlefield today, and we must give truth its weapons, and this means putting science on the side, reason on the side of unreason, and the battle has concrete instruments, debates, concrete spaces, and concrete forces.

The other part is fear.

The fears of humanity

What are you afraid of today? I’m going to finish, I’m already here finishing. Chileans are more disciplined than Colombians, aren’t they? We dance better, so we’re wasting time. We’re going to invite (former Chilean President Michelle) Bachelet to dance here at the United Nations, hopefully at the General Secretariat, wherever they invite us.

We have to go in strong, or else… That’s why I proposed an army to save the world, but so far, Indonesia has responded with a significant yes. We also need to talk about that. Because I learned in my youth that human beings aren’t understood through words alone, and especially now.

So, what fears?

I summarize the fears in three major fears, and they are not the only ones: fear of the climate crisis, it is evident, it is seen every day, even if you deny it, it appears.

There’s no need to explain it much, and it’s only going to get worse. From what we know from science, we’re approaching collapse, and that’s scary, scary to die, scary that your children will die.

Any woman in New York with children will be afraid. Overcoming the crisis allows us to avoid generating fear, and then we would have an alliance within humanity, but if humanity allows itself to be overcome by fear of the climate crisis and, above all, by what we propose to solve it. I’ll conclude.

We propose, in a way, as it’s read or as it can be manipulated, to put an end to comfort, and these are comfort societies. Europe, the Latin American middle classes, and the United States, comfort.

We’re going to get rid of the car, we’re going to get rid of the sooty house, we’re going to get rid of gasoline-powered transportation, etc. We’re going to get rid of everything made with oil, and almost everything is made with oil.

So, the world of wellness is carbonized. When we talk about decarbonization, it’s equivalent to taking away the world of wellness, and obviously, this implies a different discourse, because how comfort can be created with decarbonization, how art can be comfort, and so on—well, I won’t go into that further due to time.

The other fear is the fear of women. And the third fear is the fear of migrants. Fear of free women.

Oh, yes! The men I’ve seen around Colombia are, many of them, terrified of seeing a woman, per se, beautiful and intelligent; they’re overwhelmed. They like to see her beautiful, but not intelligent enough to dominate her.

But when beauty—and I’m not referring to the beauty imposed on us, but to the beauty that each human being has in their own spirit when they express it—combines intelligence, then the loss of power, which they have had for millennia, frightens man.

And that loss of power drives man to the extreme right. And that’s another of humanity’s fears.

And the third is the migrant.

A major current debate. The discussion about migrants has overshadowed the discussion of the climate crisis and has been premeditated, because the discussion about migrants brings in votes in racist societies, and many and majorities. And so, the left, progressivism, has clung to the need to win a majority.

It makes sense, but in racist societies, it sometimes involves bending the principles that say we are equal, free, and united.

So, a progressive discourse in Europe, especially—Pedro (Sánchez, President of the Spanish Government)—has to be very careful, right? It has to confront racism, not coexist with it, that is, an anti-immigrant policy, the same in the United States, the same in Colombia, because we have strong migrations, the same as (Chilean President Gabriel) Boric in Chile, excuse the discussion, and everywhere that grants rights to migrants.

He’s a human being, and every human being is subject to rights everywhere in the world, regardless of their skin color, and regardless of the racist reaction, even the majority of a society, progressivism must be there. Boric, excuse me.

Perhaps power is discussed in Europe not only with the ballot boxes, where only whites, Aryans, go, because the others don’t have the right to go to the polls, but also on the street.

That’s why we see massive European mobilizations and progressive defeats at the ballot box. If we combine the two: the streets and the ballot boxes in a political strategy, we unite the majority of the diverse European people, or the diverse people here in New York, or people everywhere in the world, and progressivism once again becomes the majority and, therefore, powerful.

I’ll leave these thoughts here. I went a little too far, Boric, but excuse me.

Video of the Colombian President’s speech. Video credit Colombian Presidency.

In a written statement, Trump said:

“In Colombia, coca cultivation and cocaine production have surged to all-time records under President Gustavo Petro, and his failed attempts to seek accommodations with narco-terrorist groups only exacerbated the crisis.  Under President Petro’s leadership, coca cultivation and cocaine production have reached record highs while Colombia’s government failed to meet even its own vastly reduced coca eradication goals, undermining years of mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries against narco-terrorists.  For this reason, I have designated Colombia as having failed demonstrably to meet its drug control obligations. Colombia’s security institutions and municipal authorities continue to show skill and courage in confronting terrorist and criminal groups, and the United States values the service and sacrifice of their dedicated public servants across all levels of government.  The failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.  I will consider changing this designation if Colombia’s government takes more aggressive action to eradicate coca and reduce cocaine production and trafficking, as well as hold those producing, trafficking, and benefiting from the production of cocaine responsible, including through improved cooperation with the United States to bring the leaders of Colombian criminal organizations to justice.”

The US State Department on social media directly blamed Gustavo Petro for the failures, but also noted that the US government issued a 1-year waiver, meaning bilateral cooperation, and almost half a billion USD in security and antinarcotics aid to Colombia will not end immediately. One year from now, Colombia will have a new president, as Petro’s term comes to an end August 7^th, 2026.

The decertification puts half a billion dollars of US security aid to Colombia at risk. Mafia & insurgent groups have flourished during the government of Gustavo Petro.

“Under Petro’s misguided leadership, coca cultivation & cocaine production in Colombia has increased to historic levels…President Trump “has determined that the Colombian government failed to uphold its drug control obligations, but he has issued a waiver so critical US cooperation, including on counter-narcotics, can continue. Results matter – we must see progress and it must be soon!” the State Department tweeted.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro ran on a presidential campaign promising “total peace” and pledging programs that would replace coca production with other food crops, increasing Colombia’s agricultural exports. What has happened, however, is the reverse. Narco-insurgent groups such as FARC dissident mafias, communist rebels ELN, and the Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan) mafia are all resurgent and taking over territory from government control. Over the weekend, narco-insurgents bombed an electrical tower in Medellin, and this just a few weeks after a massive truck bomb killed over 19 in Cali, Colombia’s third largest city. Under the Petro administration, cocaine production has surpassed levels seen during the days of the cartels and Pablo Escobar.

Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerilla group himself, has made statements defending cocaine, calling it “no worse than whisky,” and in April, his own former foreign minister Alvaro Leyva publicly accused him of being a drug addict.

“It was in Paris where I was able to confirm that you had a problem with drug addiction. But what could I do? Surely, I was not up to the task. I should have reached out, helped, intervened. I carry the regret of not having tried to lend a hand. The truth is, you never recovered. That is the reality,” said Leyva.

A defiant Gustavo Petro refused to accept any responsibility and said that the Trump administration’s decision demonstrates that US policy has failed.

Petro’s own Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, is an admitted recovering drug addict.

Last night, a defiant Petro blamed the US and defended his administration’s efforts, saying that the move would end Colombia’s dependence on the United States, and cited the government’s recent cocaine seizures, without mentioning the skyrocketing production during his Council of Ministers meeting.

“You begin with a factual lie. Coca crop growth has occurred during (Iván) Duque’s administration, and with forced fumigation. It is U.S. policy that has failed. To reduce coca leaf cultivation, what is needed is not glyphosate dropped from airplanes, but a decrease in demand for cocaine, primarily from the U.S. and Europe,” said Petro in response to the US State Department statement.

Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whose administration also experienced decertification, and whose 1994 campaign was partially financed by the Cali Cartel drug lords, assured that decertification was “not the end of the world.” The former president added that “we must once again demand that consumer countries like the United States and many in Europe fulfill their commitment to reducing drug demand, precisely at a time when consumption of plant-based drugs has declined and the devastating effects of synthetic drugs like fentanyl and other narcotics we don’t produce are being felt.”

Samper stated that the decision to decertify Colombia in its fight against drugs “is illegal, political, and regressive.” He explained that it is “illegal because no country is authorized to impose unilateral sanctions on another country or its nationals. Only the United Nations can do so under established circumstances and in justified cases of necessity,” and it is political “because it has always been used to punish countries considered “enemies” of the United States. The worst right-wing dictatorships have benefited from the non-application of decertification, while our country, which has paid high human and institutional costs, is decertified every time the Colombian government appears as an “enemy” of the United States government.”

Paisa politicians blame Petro

Not all Colombian politicians are defending Petro. Medellín’s mayor Federico “Fico” Gutierrez, who returned from the US on his own diplomatic missive to meet with US officials  in direct defiance of Petro’s orders not to go, issued a statement damning the Colombian President:

“Colombia is being decertified by the United States in the fight against drugs. It was to be expected. Petro sided with the worst criminals. They are the only ones who have won under this disastrous government. During our visit to Washington last week, our position was to ask that Colombia not be decertified. And if it were to happen, we asked that support for our public forces in the fight against drug trafficking not be withheld, nor that the trade on which millions of jobs depend in Medellín and throughout Colombia be affected. Indeed, our agenda in Washington was successful in defending Colombia. Although Colombia is decertified, it leaves the door open for support for our public forces and expressly highlights the recognition that the United States gives to our public forces and mayors: *“Colombia’s security institutions and municipal authorities continue to demonstrate skill and courage in confronting terrorist and criminal groups, and the United States values ​​the service and sacrifice of its dedicated public servants at all levels of government.”* (see photo) In the midst of all this, we would have solutions as a country. But seeing Petro’s absurd statements, his intention is for Colombia to lose this opportunity and for us to be plunged into chaos. It is very evident that this is what he wants and has sought all along: to be left alone and remain in power. All the more reason we remain steadfast in the defense of Colombia and our people. We pull Colombia forward from the regions.” (below video)

Colombia es descertificada por Estados Unidos en la lucha contra las drogas. Era de esperarse. Petro se puso fue del lado de los peores criminales. Son los únicos que han ganado con este nefasto gobierno.
En nuestra visita a Washington de la semana pasada, nuestra posición fue… pic.twitter.com/2qEIBTpTGU

— Fico Gutiérrez (@FicoGutierrez) September 16, 2025

The Governor of Antioquia, Andrés Julián Rendón, also had a scathing rebuke for his own president. Antioquia is the Colombian department where Medellín is capital and is home to much of Colombia’s economic activity. Rendón tweeted:

“Regarding the decertification of Colombia, the Government of @petrogustavo – It’s a snapshot of the failure of “total peace,” of temporizing with criminals, of dealing with them in a friendly way while they destroy the country and Colombians. – Now, the Petro government should stop playing the victim coming up with resentful, outdated, anti-US rhetoric. The President is reaping his own harvest of incompetence and failure: he sided with the criminals. The world and the US are paying him back. – Antioquia is the first victim: flooded in a sea of ​​cocaine by a weak government that ties up soldiers and police to prevent action. The criminals win, and we Antioqueños lose. Drugs, drugs, and more drugs to poison our youth and to enrich and strengthen the criminals. – Aerial spraying was the most successful tool in the past: effective in eradication, it protected our soldiers and police. It must be reactivated. Tomorrow will be too late! It’s been proven: more cocaine seizures are not proof of greater effectiveness in the fight against drug trafficking; rather, they are the ultimate proof of a historic peak in production. We’ve gone back more than 20 years, but fortunately, this government has only months left. In Antioquia, despite intimidation and judicial persecution, we will continue working to defend the interests of my fellow citizens, adhering to the Constitution and appealing to the courage of soldiers and police. In our government, we understand peace as the rule of law, security, justice, and social opportunity. We will remain there, even if our lives and freedom are at risk.

Sobre la decertificación a Colombia, al Gobierno de @petrogustavo:

– Es una radiografía del fracaso de la paz total, de contemporizar con criminales, de tratarlos por las buenas mientras acaban con el país y los colombianos.

– Ahora que el Gobierno Petro no se haga la víctima… pic.twitter.com/OygRV29NER

— Andrés Julián (@AndresJRendonC) September 16, 2025

Business calls for cooler heads to prevail

Amcham Colombia, the binational Colombian-American chamber of commerce based in Bogotá and made up of both Colombian and US businesses involved in bilateral trade, issued a statement lamenting the decision, while also calling for the Colombian President to do more to save the relationship.

“AmCham Colombia firmly and respectfully calls on the National Government to urgently present and implement a roadmap with achievable and verifiable goals that demonstrate political will and substantial improvements in crop eradication, production and trafficking reduction, judicial cooperation, and the financial dismantling of criminal organizations. Only then can the country request reconsideration of the designation in the next cycle and maintain assistance within the national interest of the United States.

Respectfully, AmCham Colombia invites the United States Government to recognize the progress in interdiction and seizures and to consider announcing the resumption of spraying when appropriate and under the safeguards of the Constitutional Court, complemented by alternative development and a comprehensive state presence. These signals should contribute to avoiding measures that affect trade, tourism, and investment between the two countries.”

🇺🇲🇨🇴 #Descertificación con interés nacional@AmChamCol hace un llamado firme y respetuoso al Gobierno Nacional para presentar y ejecutar con urgencia una hoja de ruta con metas alcanzables y verificables que evidencie voluntad política y una mejora sustancial en: erradicación… pic.twitter.com/qDer8SKYFl

— Maria Claudia Lacouture (@mclacouture) September 16, 2025

Above image: Gustavo Petro during his council of ministers meeting where he defended his administration and blamed Trump for his country’s decertification. Photo credit: Ovidio González – Presidencyof The Republic

The initiative’s blockage caused outrage among Petro, his supporters, such as his Minister of The Interior, Armando Benedetti, some labor unions and segments of the public, but also relief among much of his political opposition, almost all of the organized business community, and even many activists and academics who claim that the initiative would worsen Colombia’s serious problem of informal employment.

According to Bogotá think-tank, Instituto de Ciencia Politica Hernán Echavarría Olózaga, the initiative “imposes formalization requirements that hinder microbusinesses and small enterprise access to the formal market, perpetuation of labor informality, already at 55.2%,” according to government statistics, while the elimination of “temporary and seasonal contracts limits the ability of sectors such as construction and services to adapt to market needs.”

Petro’s failed labor reform would have among other new rules, demanded paid time off for women experiencing menstruation.

“We urge the Senate to rethink the structural elements of the Labor Reform to take into account the disincentives to formalization, transaction costs, and citizens’ freedom to participate in the labor market. The debate must take into account that the business community is made up of more than 93% MSMEs, as well as the economic reality the country is experiencing due to political decisions. The true precariousness of employment is condemning people to informality,” added Carlos Augusto Chacón, executive director of the think tank.

Petro & Comrades Left Outraged

While many were breathing a sigh of relief, Petro and his political team were left fuming. Minister of the Interior and Petro’s primary political fixer Armando Benedetti accused the Senate President Efraín Cépeda of fraud, and threatened criminal charges, repeatedly calling him and others who disagreed with the president “malandrines” (scoundrels).

La ira es súper dañina para la presión arteriaaajajajajajajaja pic.twitter.com/qOlzodZYGy

— Miller Soto (@millersoto) May 14, 2025

“The elections were stolen, there was fraud, and they completely damaged everything related to labor rights for the working class. Poor workers. Here in this country, people don’t have a decent salary or decent jobs because of the congressmen. I think they have to appeal and see what happens in the Senate of the Republic because there was fraud there, there was an appeal, and they have to vote again,” said Benedetti in a hallway after leaving the senate chamber where he lost his composure, grabbing papers from others and pounding his fists on the bench.

Petro, who spent the last week in China committing Colombia to the country’s “Belt and Road” initiative, also denounced the senate, accusing them for fraud, apparently for voting against his wishes. After doing so two weeks ago, he called on his supporters to take to the streets On Twitter/X he said:

The referendum didn’t fail. It was scuttled by fraud, as on April 19, 1970. Senator Efrain Cepeda, knowing that the votes that gave him a majority were coming in, closed the voting process. We are facing fraud, and the people must decide. I immediately propose a meeting of the labor unions, the peasant coordination, the community action boards, the neighborhood youth committees, and the indigenous movement to take the next step. The order as president of the Republic of Colombia is that, at this time, the public forces must not use their force against the people. Their presence must be sufficient to protect the buildings of the institutions and guarantee peaceful coexistence among the citizens. Preserve peace and joy. Now it is up to the coordination of the popular movement to take the next steps, in accordance with the Constitution. The people cannot be silenced by deception. I am ready for whatever the people decide. Efraín Cepeda made the worst mistake that could possibly be made in Colombia: using fraud.

No se hundió la consulta popular. La hundieron con fraude, como en un 19 de abril de 1970.

El senador Efrain Cepeda sabedor que ingresaban los votos que la hacían mayoría, cerró la votación.

Estamos ante un fraude y el pueblo debe decidir.

Peopongo de inmediato la reunión de… https://t.co/oA1iwd3TbC

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) May 14, 2025

Former Finance Ministers Applaud The Senate

Former Finance Minister under the centrist Juan Manuel Santos administration, Mauricio Cárdenas said that he “Celebrates the Senate’s decision to say ‘no’ to the referendum. It’s the responsible decision; the Senate did a great job.”

Cárdenas also said that holding Petro’s referendum meant “throwing 750 billion pesos into the trash (cost of holding the referendum) when the country needs them to support young students who have had their Icetex loan subsidies cut off.” Icetex is a student loan program in Colombia that under Petro’s administration, despite his campaign promise of making university affordable or free, is facing a funding crisis and cannot meet student loan obligations, cutting off access to attendance.

Former Finance Minister José Manuel Restrepo also admonished Petro for his polemic statements this afternoon, saying “don’t put democracy at risk, and instead respect the institutions and their decisions. That is acting like a true democrat and a symbol of national unity.”

The Changes Petro’s Labor Reform Would Have Demanded

The key provisions of Petro’s labor reform are the following, with light analysis added by Finance Colombia. Colombia already has a somewhat restrictive labor regime, making formal employment very expensive, and keeping millions stuck in informal employment. For example, part-time and hourly employment is forbidden by law in most cases in Colombia, so a university student could not—formally, at least—work his or her way through college by working the dinner shift as a waiter. Colombian law currently requires employers to buy clothing for workers under a certain income threshold (double minimum wage), even if there is no dress requirement. This is a relic from the time when most workers were either agricultural or industrial. President Gustavo Petro’s referendum proposes the following:

1. Limit the normal workday to 8 hours between 6am and 6pm only.
2. Double pay for work on Sunday and holidays.
3. Preferential rates and incentives for micro, small and medium businesses, no details on what these rates or incentives may be, or who qualifies.
4. In addition to medical leave already covered by law, female workers would be given paid time off for menstrual periods.
5. 2 of every100 employees must be disabled, apparently with no exception for high risk, high agility jobs such as construction, agriculture. or mining.
6. Mandatory employment for college and trade school interns – obligation on the employer, not the students.
7. Mandatory social security and health coverage for delivery freelancers, such as ÜberEats, Rappi, DiDI, InDrive, etc.
8. A new labor regulatory regime for agricultural workers, no details given.
9. Eliminating outsourcing via union contracts that violate existing, or these new regimens.
10. Eliminate freelance or contractual employment for athletes, journalists, drivers, domestic workers, and babysitters – for example, the common practice of hiring freelance journalists, or paying athletes for participating in a competition would be forbidden. They must become traditional, long-term employees, as temporary contracts appear to be forbidden under the next provision:
11. Indefinite (open-ended) contracts would become the rule, so no temporary, or term contracts, such as to finish a construction project, or harvest seasonal agriculture.
12. Creation of an additional pension fund, beyond the existing, mandatory government pension scheme, for agricultural workers.
    

    Official government pamphlet promoting the referendum, with its twelve proposals.

“The memories I still have fresh of certain episodes—of which I was a direct witness—continue to cause me unease and dismay,” wrote Leyva in his letter, who served as the eldest member of Petro’s original cabinet as Foreign Minister. He was referencing a state visit to France in June 2023, where Petro allegedly “disappeared for two days,” delaying the delegation’s return.

Leyva added, “It was in Paris where I was able to confirm that you had a problem with drug addiction. But what could I do? Surely, I was not up to the task. I should have reached out, helped, intervened. I carry the regret of not having tried to lend a hand. The truth is, you never recovered. That is the reality.”

While the accusations were met with skepticism by Petro’s allies, the President himself responded on X, but without naming Leyva directly. “Now it’s a sin to be with my family. Because several of my children and my mother live abroad, and because of the persecution we suffer, I have very few opportunities to see them,” he wrote hours later. The following day, during a public appearance, Petro mocked the allegations: “Being a drug addict is not a sin, Mr. Oligarch. Most of your children are addicted—if not to drugs, then to money. It’s a treatable disease, but never blame that illness on a revolutionary who has spent his entire life trying to make his dream revolution come true,” he said in a speech lasting more than an hour.

Leyva, now 82, began Petro’s administration in 2022 as a key figure in the President’s peace-building agenda. Under his leadership, Colombia reestablished diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Cuba, making them key guarantors in peace talks with the ELN and FARC dissident groups. However, in 2023, Leyva was accused of unlawfully annulling a tender process for the issuance of passports—a decision that ultimately led to a ten-year public service ban imposed in November 2024. The ruling found that Leyva had canceled the bidding process despite the company Thomas Greg & Sons (TGS) meeting all legal requirements.

Days later, Armando Benedetti publicly admitted to his own addiction struggles. In two extensive interviews with online magazine Cambio and national daily El Tiempo, Benedetti revealed he had been addicted to cocaine and alcohol and had undergone rehabilitation in Mexico. “Last October, I spent 35 days in a rehabilitation center in Mazatlán, Mexico, and there I overcame the emotional instabilities that lead one to use drugs. And that helps free oneself from many of the situations that lead to use. Based on that, with rehabilitation, you become more spiritual. You understand that you have to ask for help and that you can’t get out of there alone,” he told El Tiempo.

“Sometimes it’s hard to accept. I don’t want to be a drug addict. But I am. It’s a disease, and I wish I was not (…), 90 % of my problems are due to arrogance,” he told Cambio. However, he firmly denied Leyva’s claims about Petro.

Benedetti is currently under judicial investigation for gender-based violence, illicit enrichment, and alleged physical aggression—charges filed in 2023 by current Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, after leaked audio revealed him using offensive language against her during a past dispute.

These two revelations have reignited debate over personal conduct in public office and the boundaries between political loyalty, accountability, and privacy. But it has also raised concerns about the health of those whom have the Colombian government in their hands.

Headline photo: Armando Benedetti, Minister of the Interior of Colombia since February (Photo: Ministerio del Interior)

On January 22, the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia questioned him in relation to an ongoing probe into alleged misconduct in public office and falsification of public documents. The investigation arises from four controversial appointments made during his current term, which began in 2024.

A formal complaint was filed in June 2024 by a citizen, José Raúl Rodríguez Jiménez, who alleges that Char violated public employment regulations by appointing former city council members to key roles in his administration immediately after they lost reelection bids. The appointees include Elania Redondo Peña (Barranquilla’s Secretary of Human Resource Management), Andrés Felipe Rengifo Lemus (Head of Citizen Participation Office), Juan Carlos Ospino Acuña (Secretary of Culture and Heritage of Barranquilla), and Richard Manuel Fernández Barraza (Head of Port Affairs).

According to the complaint, these appointments went against rules requiring a one-year period for former council members before assuming public office, unless they have also resigned from their political parties.
The complaint, as reported by the local daily El Espectador, highlights that “Char ignored, despite the team of advisors that work in his cabinet, the ‘Disqualification and Incompatibility Regime for Public Officials’. It states that city council members, upon leaving office or ceasing to be public servants, must wait 12 months to be able to hold public office and, likewise, must resign from their respective parties.” The newspaper reported that it had access to the official document outlining the allegations.

Char is also in the news due to his past ties to the construction sector. Between 2002 and 2005, his company, Alejandro Char & Cía., developed a series of residential complexes in the Campo Alegre neighborhood, an area long identified as geologically unstable. Despite warnings as early as 1997 from Ingeominas, the city amended its urban development plan to allow the projects to proceed. Years later, more than 400 families were affected by serious structural damage to their homes, forcing the city to spend over 55 billion pesos on rental subsidies and hillside stabilization. Some of the buildings were evacuated in 2011 due to the risk of collapse.

In response to the ongoing investigations into this matter, Jaime Berdugo was appointed as ‘alcalde ad hoc’ (interim mayor) of Barranquilla on April 15, 2025, by Interior Minister Armando Benedetti. Berdugo, a lawyer and former employee of entities linked to contractor Euclides Torres, a political figure with ties to the Char administration, has been tasked with overseeing the city’s handling of claims related to the damaged housing projects. His role includes evaluating legal and administrative actions connected to Alejandro Char & Cía.’s developments, including the projects Ciudad del Sol II, Terragona, Barcelona, Parque 100, and Parque 98.

As a very experienced politician, Char has served three terms as mayor and ran as a presidential pre-candidate in 2022. Legal controversies have been common alongside his political career so it is not a surprise that this time, despite the legal pressures, Char’s popularity among Barranquilla’s residents remains strong.

Headline photo: Alejandro Char, mayor of Barranquilla (X / @AlejandroChar)