Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel transformed the cocaine trade during their heyday in the 1980s. But the 30 years since the kingpin’s death have shown that the business remains one of the world’s most dynamic criminal economies.

Escobar was killed by a specially assigned police unit on December 2, 1993. His death marked the start of a new era in the global drug trade. Over the next three decades, drug trafficking organizations run from the top down by powerful, high-profile capos gave way to dispersed networks connected by “invisible” middlemen who tend to avoid the limelight.

The cocaine business has also expanded. The United States remains the world’s major consumer of the drug, but huge new markets have sprung up in Europe and Asia, spurring the emergence of new trafficking networks to feed that demand.

In response, the supply has also seen unstoppable growth. Cocaine production in Colombia and neighboring Andean countries has reached historic highs in recent years, and criminal groups have even begun experimenting with growing crops outside their native region.

1. The Fall of the Cartels and the Rise of the ‘Invisibles’

In Escobar’s time, much of cocaine production and trafficking was controlled by cartels led by larger-than-life figures. In the years following his death, these hierarchical organizations and big personalities have disappeared.

Traffickers have learned that it is far more profitable to keep a low profile, leading to the rise of what InSight Crime has dubbed the “Invisibles.” Among some of the most prolific of the Invisibles to be unmasked are Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo, alias “Memo Fantasma,” and Luis Agustín Caicedo Velandia, alias “Don Lucho.”

At the same time, the cocaine market has come to be dominated by looser, more fragmented networks that specialize in certain steps of the process. And the Gaitanistas — also known as the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC), the Urabeños, or the Gulf Clan — one of the main criminal groups in Colombia, are a case in point.

The AGC is the result of a criminal evolution that began with the Medellín Cartel and continued with the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC). Both organizations failed to recover from the death of their leaders or their internal divisions.

The AGC learned from those failures, and from the beginning, it was conceived as a network. This has allowed the group to adapt to the deaths and captures of its main leaders, without affecting its participation in the different nodes in the cocaine market.

2. Cocaine Trade Goes Global

When Escobar’s Medellín Cartel was at the peak of its power, most of the profits from the cocaine trade came from the voracious appetite for the drug in the United States.

Though the United States still accounts for a major share of global cocaine consumption, expanding European markets have become increasingly important in recent years. The drug fetches high prices across the Atlantic, and criminal groups in Latin American and the Caribbean have built trafficking relationships with a range of European partners. Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta, Dutch-Moroccan mafias, Albanian networks, and others now maintain upstream trafficking relationships that increase their profits by bringing them closer to the product’s source.

Cocaine produced in South America has also begun to flow in significant quantities through new regions. Nigerian networks have emerged as key players in trafficking to and through Africa. In the Middle East, cocaine now moves through Turkey, Israel, and other countries. Several Asian markets also appear poised for growth. Cocaine prices in Australia and New Zealand are among the highest in the world. Large, recent seizures of the drug in Asian major transportation hubs like Hong Kong suggest traffickers are seeking to meet that demand.

3. Production Increases and Expands

Over the past 30 years, coca cultivation has continued to expand, increasing the potential production of cocaine to record highs.

Despite numerous initiatives over the last three decades, including forced eradication, aerial fumigation, and crop substitution programs, Colombia remains the world’s main producer of cocaine. Since 1999, when the government began to measure coca crops in the country, the number of hectares has continued to rise, reaching a historic 230,000 hectares in 2022. Increased areas of coca cultivation, coupled with advances in technology that generate higher crop yields and more sophisticated methods of refining coca base into cocaine, has led to steady growth of the country’s potential cocaine production since 2013, according to United Nations figures. In 2022, the country’s production potential reached 1,738 tons per year, the highest in history.

Cocaine production has also expanded in other countries. In Perú, where coca crops also reached a record high of 95,008 hectares in 2022, crops are moving away from consolidated production enclaves and into new areas along the country’s borders, like Indigenous territories and protected areas. And coca cultivation has spread to countries that were previously not producers, like Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela.

This article — produced by Sara Garcia, Mike LaSusa, Lara Loaiza and Charlotte Newell — was originally published by Insight Crime, a Medellín-based foundation dedicated to the investigation and analysis of crime and security in Colombia and Latin America.

In this week’s episode

• Gustavo Petro calls for an end to free markets and laments the fall of the Berlin Wall – original video of his speech here. Berlin government information on the Berlin Wall and its victims
• Marta Lucia Ramirez implicated in unfolding Italian bribes scandal, while her husband’s firm is involved in a legally imperiled construction project in San Andrés, Colombia. Original article where she went after an investigative journalist for exposing her family ties to accused paramilitary drug trafficker Memo Fantasma can be read here.
• Guerillas make fools of the Colombian government, building roads and acting as the de-facto government, even building roads and operating openly in Tibú, Colombia with no formal government presence or opposition.
• Update on the evolving scandal involving Petro’s former chief of staff and ambassador to Venezuela
• Rumors of a possible resurrection of Ultra Air

“The right to freedom is a fundamental right and is seen as the guiding principle of our accusatory criminal justice system,” said judge Gueyler Quintero Osorio. “In this case, Mr. Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo should regain his freedom.”

Acevedo is facing charges of money laundering and criminal conspiracy, and he could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison if found guilty. His trial is set to continue in October.

This article generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

Acevedo was unmasked by a 2020 InSight Crime investigation, “The Invisible Drug Lord: Hunting ‘The Ghost’.” He was arrested in June 2021 in Bogotá during a visit from his home base in Spain.

Acevedo maintains his innocence and insists that the whole case is one of mistaken identity. However, more than a dozen sources consulted by InSight Crime over the last four years stated that Acevedo was a member of the Medellín Cartel; then part of the criminal group that emerged after the death of Pablo Escobar, the Oficina de Envigado; and finally became a commander in the paramilitary army of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC), responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Colombians.

SEE ALSO: Memo Fantasma May Walk Out of Prison: Corruption or Incompetence?

The latest ruling comes after what appears to be a catalog of missteps by prosecutor Julio César Ochoa, who along with his boss Carlos Enrique Vieda, suspended arrest warrants for two close associates of Acevedo. Ochoa also fumbled a hearing to get an extension to Acevedo’s pre-trial detention, and he did not appeal the latest decision granting the suspected drug lord his liberty.

“This is not unusual,” said a prosecutor monitoring the case. “One gets the feeling this has been orchestrated and this can only be the result of complete incompetence or outright corruption.”

Another prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he believed that money had changed hands. There have already been indications of bribery in connection with the case. In June 2021, a report surfaced that an attempt had been made to bribe an investigator in the Attorney General’s Office. An investigator reported being offered 100 million Colombian pesos (around $23,000) to hand over case files.

Ochoa took over the case in March from Juan David Huepe, an experienced prosecutor who may have been removed by Vieda. Huepe would not make any formal comment when contacted by InSight Crime. Vieda appointed Ochoa, a prosecutor with no experience in money laundering cases.

SEE ALSO: Memo Fantasma’s Wife Faces Potential Money Laundering Charges

Documents on the case obtained by InSight Crime show that the case against Acevedo built by Huepe was very strong, with more evidence expected after some high-profile arrests and declarations by other senior paramilitaries. The arrest warrants have since been suspended, and the declarations have not been taken.

“This decision was already coming since the change of prosecutor. The current prosecutor is an absolute incompetent, who has been reproached by three different judges. The whole thing is simply incredible,” said alias, “Charlie” who worked for Acevedo in his drug trafficking business for 12 years. Charlie has been following every aspect of the case, having contacted InSight Crime after the publication of our 2020 investigation. He used to make payments to police, politicians, and members of the Attorney General’s Office on Acevedo’s behalf. He fears that Acevedo, once free, will make another attempt on his life in order to silence him.

Charlie told InSight Crime that several underworld figures, who had worked with Acevedo in both Colombia and the United States, had received phone calls from him in prison, or via emissaries, telling them to keep their mouths shut.

InSight Crime investigations have shown that Acevedo has at least $30 million dollars in bank accounts, properties, and investments in Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Underworld contacts in Australia, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela, might also be able to help him evade justice.

This article generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

*In the interests of full transparency, it should be noted that author Jeremy McDermott was the subject of a criminal libel lawsuit presented by Guillermo León Acevedo, which was shelved by the Colombian Attorney General’s Office in December 2021 for lack of evidence.

“This year in Colombia they have murdered 22 social leaders, there have been 19 massacres. In 2021, within the framework of the protests, the police murdered, disappeared and sexually assaulted hundreds of protesters. The systematic violation of human rights is endless. To complete the shamelessness, Duque is being received with a red carpet in Europe,” said Miguel Urbán Crespo, a radical leftist Member of the European Parliament from Spain.

Indeed during Duque’s tenure, Colombia seems to mirror the popular movie “The Hunger Games” where Bogotá and Medellín, analogous to Districts 1 and 2 from the movie are world class, modern cities complete with luxury housing, advanced health care, and imported delicacies, while much of the country remains without basic services, education, or unlike the Hunger Games, basic security and government protection. The United Nations is very clear that the worsening of conditions is solidly within Duque’s term of responsibility and can’t be blamed on longer term trends. From the UN Global Humanitarian Overview:

In 2021, organized NSAGs [Non-State Armed Groups] have expanded rapidly in peripheral areas of the country, creating an increase in hostilities and violence affecting civilian populations, particularly ethnic minorities. Increased use of explosive ordnance, including improvised landmines, has been reported, particularly in rural areas and regions bordering neighboring countries, where illicit crops and other illegal economies are located. In 2021, indigenous communities have been gravely affected by explosive ordnance, recording a 20 per cent increase in indigenous casualties compared with 2020.¹ The increase in recruitment of minors has also been reported.² 2021 witnessed the highest number of people affected by mass displacements and confinement in the last decade and a continuous trend in confinement affecting more than 113,000 people this year.³

The same report notes that while Colombia is classified as an “Upper Middle Income” country, on the INFORM Severity Index, Colombia ranks as 4.5 / Very High, in other words, a humanitarian disaster. The European Commission’s “INFORM Severity Index is an improved way to objectively measure and compare the severity of humanitarian crises and disasters globally.”

The Duque administration was further embarrassed by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization that listed Colombia as the only country in South America as “Food Insecure and in need of food assistance in 2022” along with South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Madagascar and Yemen. Rather than address the crisis, Vice President and acting foreign minister Marta Lucia Ramirez demanded that Colombia be removed from the report.

The administration didn’t dare protest when two years ago, the United States government said the same thing about Colombia: “Food security needs in Colombia remain high due to internal conflict and periodic natural disasters, as well as the influx of vulnerable Venezuelans and Colombian returnees crossing into Colombia as a result of the escalating economic and political crisis in Venezuela.”

During the COVID pandemic lockdowns, for almost a year there was a general curfew throughout the country, giving police more reason and power to stop and question people out on the roads, but during the pandemic, illicit narcotics exports surged. 1,228 metric tons of cocaine were produced in Colombia in 2020, an increase of 8 percent over the previous year.

Photo of Marta Lucia Ramirez by Felipe Castaño, Vicepresidency of The Republic

It has been difficult to take the Duque administration’s antinarcotics efforts seriously when his own Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez, the same one who made demands against the UN report on Colombia’s precarious humanitarian situation, also tried to press criminal charges against investigative journalists at Insight Crime who revealed and verified her own family’s ties to narcotraffickers. Her husband had business dealings with now convicted paramilitary narcotrafficker “Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo, AKA “Memo Fantasma,” and it was revealed that the vice president paid $150,000 to bail out her own brother who was caught and convicted for heroin trafficking.

The attorney general’s office has now revealed that criminal mafias such as the notorious Clan del Golfo have likely infiltrated the Colombian military and law enforcement at the highest levels, including army generals. Had this been revealed at the beginning of Duque’s term, he could claim to be the guy to clean things up, but he is in the final months of his presidency. Even the Catholic church has spoken out against what it sees as actual collaboration between the military and mafias.

“We found in various municipalities that in many places where there is a strong presence of the Army and the public force there is a concomitant presence of the Clan del Golfo,” said Monsignor Juan Carlos Barreto, Archbishop of Quibdó, Chocó “We confirm the seriousness of the humanitarian crisis due to the armed conflict and the abandonment of the state.”

It’s not hard to argue that Duque has been no friend of the campesinos. Criminal displacements—being run off your land or home by armed gangs—has more than doubled in the past year alone. From the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report (translated):

“The number of victims due to mass displacement has increased by 101% between January and May 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. Likewise, the number of displacement events has increased by 31%, that is, they have been registered 15 more events in relation to the same period in 2020. So far, only 19% of the victims of displacement in 2021 have returned to their homes, while 81% or 23,837 people remain displaced, due to the impossibility of having a safe return due to the inadequate security conditions that remain in the territory, and in the midst of intersectoral needs that require attention.”

The report goes on to say:

It is worrying that the attacks against the civilian population and that trigger mass displacements are expanding and increasing by 54% to other departments such as La Guajira, Cesar, Arauca, Meta, Guaviare and Caquetá, among others. The increase in homicides and intentional injuries in civilians stands out by 161% and 70% respectively, showing an increase in attacks against civilians in a large part of the national territory.

The security situation under Duque is deteriorating such that criminals are emboldened enough to even attack the Presidential helicopter, as happened last year when the president was arriving in Cúcuta, a city on Colombia’s border with Venezuela. The presidential Sikorsky Black Hawk took six hits from small arms fire.

Colombians at home are unhappy with Duque

Colombia’s ESMAD riot police have indiscriminately attacked journalists, bystanders, and unlucky passers-by caught in the area.

Last year, Colombians took to the streets after Duque’s finance minister, Alberto Carrasquilla sought to raise taxes by expanding Colombia’s income tax obligation to lower income Colombians and taxing basic staples, but in an interview demonstrated he had no idea how much a dozen eggs cost. The abusive response by Colombia’s ESMAD riot police further inflamed the situation.

Yesterday, Colombian polling firm Invamer released results of a poll taken the first two weeks of February that shows only 20% of Colombians approve of his governance, while 73% disapprove. Many Colombians and investors abroad fear a left-wing presidency by former guerilla militant Gustavo Petro, but Duque with his dismal ratings may inadvertently be Petro’s best ally. The same Invamer poll showed that for the first time since 2018, Petro’s favorable ratings at 42 points have exceeded his unfavorable opinion ratings, which are at 40 points. Other presidential candidates’ ratings:

• • Juan Manuel Galán (centrist): 29% favorable, 22% unfavorable
  • Sergio Fajardo (centrist): 25% favorable, 33% unfavorable
  • Ingrid Betancourt (left): 23% favorable, 43% unfavorable
  • Alejandro Gaviria (centrist) 17% favorable, 23% unfavorable
  • Francia Márquez (left) 16% favorable, 8% unfavorable
  • Rodolfo Hernández (right) 16% favorable, 16% unfavorable
  • Federico Gutierrez (centrist) 15% favorable, 22% unfavorable
  • Alejandro Char (centrist) 12% favorable, 32% unfavorable

The Centro Democrático political party controlled by former President and current Senator Álvaro Uribe’s candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga has a favorable rating of 15% and unfavorable rating of 45%, a higher unfavorable rating than anyone except Ivan Duque himself, who cannot run due to Colombia’s single presidential term limit, and former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who has an approval rating of 21% and unfavorable image of 67%. Uribe was once widely seen as a hero, but his popularity has plummeted as allegations surface of human rights abuses during his administration, and more recent witness tampering and charges of attempting to frame opposition politicians. Uribe spent some time under house arrest due to the charges.

Members of Duque’s own Centro Democrático don’t seem to have much respect for him. “Uribista” senator María Fernanda Cabál was caught in a recorded phone call with a retired military officer sharing her true sentiment toward President Duque:

Uribista senator Maria Fernanda Cabal says Ivan Duque is a “Mamerto.”

“Duque is a leftist liberal, Duque is a mamerto,” says Cabal. Mamerto is a very strong insult in Colombian slang that can translate as idiot, but in Colombia is especially used as a pejorative for leftists, such as historically, sympathizers with the FARC or ELN rebel groups.

The soldier then asks how he could have infiltrated the party. “He didn’t infiltrate us, he was installed by Fabio Echeverri Correa, because Duque was intelligent and applied, and was sent to accompany [chaperone] his lazy son, who isn’t worth a butthole, Luigi Echeverri,” Cabal goes on to say. Fabio Echeverri Correa was a powerful businessman and president of ANDI, Colombia’s largest business trade association. His son, Luigi Echeverri is a friend of President Duque and a member of several corporate bords in Colombia, such as Telefónica Colombia (operating as Movistar), Ecopetrol, and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce. He was President Duque’s campaign manager, and based on his LinkedIn profile, he presides over an “entity supporting the ideas of f. President Dr. Alvaro Uribe Vélez.”

Needless to say, Maria Fernanda Cabal is not impressed.

“It is that if you have a lazy son and you have money and you want him to graduate, then you invite the most intelligent girl in the class to blow him off. Like when your daughter is ugly, you have to take her with the pretty one to see if she picks someone up,” she continued.

“This guevón worked in Washington all his life and he carried Uribe’s suitcase when he went on a trip, but that’s only when we see the guy.” Guevón literally translates to “big eggs” but is also an insult in Colombian slang, like mamerto: strong words that would tend to start a bar fight if used with a stranger

“He is poison, so [President] Uribe always ends up falling, and we end up fucked because he [Duque] has the flavor of shit…There is nothing to do until he is gone, so I tell you, we win or we are all going to shit,” said Cabal. When the recording was leaked, she doubled down and stood by her words. Duque and Luigi Echeverry refused to respond, with Echeverry saying to simply consider the source, and Duque responding in Latin: “De minimis non curat praetor:” The magistrate does not consider trifles.

Let them eat eggs…and potatoes

Nos llevó el putas! Huevos a más de mil pesos cada uno pic.twitter.com/mNxjmKGsEq

— JUAN CARLOS VILLANI (@JUANVILLANI) February 15, 2022

Last year, the finance minister was lost when it came to the price of eggs. But Monday, a journalist with one of Colombia’s largest media networks was moved to profanity when he encountered eggs in a Bogotá supermarket selling for over $1,030 Colombian pesos per egg, or 26 US cents.

“On the issue of eggs, it depends on its quality. Let’s say $1,800 COP (48 cents, US) a dozen or something like that.”

For the record, Duque’s former Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla guessed that a dozen eggs cost $1,800 pesos, or 48 cents. Carrasquilla proposed adding Colombia’s 19% VAT tax to basic foodstuffs like eggs and rice, also to gasoline and funerals, while exempting firearms and sugary soft drinks. Carrasquilla’s answer? “On the issue of eggs, it depends on its quality. Let’s say $1,800 COP (48 cents, US) a dozen or something like that.”

Even though Colombia is a petroleum exporting country and petroleum prices have jumped, the Colombian peso is at a near record low, worsening inflation. Potatoes, another Colombian staple, have jumped 140% in prices compared to a year ago. Per capital potato consumption in Colombia exceeds a whopping 79 pounds, or 36 kilos.

The government has announced it is removing import duties on agricultural supplies such as pesticides in an attempt to reduce prices, but any effect will be delayed until future harvests.

Colombian food price increases between December 2021 & January 2022

The Ivan Duque Legacy

While it is far too early for historians to assess Duque’s presidency, it is hard to find economic or social indicators that can justify a positive assessment of Duque’s term.  Duque has promoted relatively investor-friendly policies, but his neglect of everyone outside of Colombia’s investor class has created a possible opening for the first-ever left-wing populist to enter the presidential palace.

Political risk expert Sergio Guzmán is co-founder of Colombia Risk Analysis

“There is a generalized negativity in the country and that favors candidates who show a platform of opposition to the status quo,” said Colombia Risk Analysis co-founder Sergio Guzman. “This drastically improves Gustavo Petro’s chances of not only making it to the second round, but potentially winning.”

Duque has publicly dragged his feet when it comes to implementing the peace accords negotiated under the previous administration, but bitterly opposed by Duque’s political godfather, Alvaro Uribe.

Overall, the Duque administration has seemed to do a competent job managing the COVID pandemic, with some notable fiascos such as his infamous “COVID Friday.” Duque also intervened to assure an insurance settlement between Spanish insurer MAPFRE and public utility conglomerate Empresas Públicas de Medellín, controlled by Medellín’s populist mayor Daniel Quintero.

Ivan Duque is seen buddy-buddy with then-head of the US International Development Finance Corporation Adam Boehler

Duque, who speaks fluent English having spent much of his professional career in Washington, has generally maintained friendly, even fawning relations with Colombia’s traditional allies such as the United States. His administration has been relatively scandal free, defined by the lack of criminal charges filed against his appointees; still, it is early. After Uribe was out of office, some of his political appointees were jailed for corruption, such as Uribe’s deputy transportation minister Gabriel Garcia Morales, and his agriculture minister Andrés Felipe Árias.

On the other hand, Duque’s attorney general and personal friend Francisco Barbosa has been seen by many to do his best making the charges that got Alvaro Uribe arrested “go away.”

Colombian President Ivan Duque does not seem like an evil person or a mean man. He may be a fairly competent administrator in the bureaucratic sense. On the other hand, he has had almost four years to demonstrate leadership and statesmanship in a country with bitter divisions, and promising economic prospects clouded by vast inequality and social stratification where it seems like the rich and poor are living in two completely different countries.

Duque has been impacted by factors out of his control such as the COVID pandemic and the Venezuelan refugee crisis. In both cases, his response deserves some praise. It must also be said that crime and insecurity seem to be on the rise, especially in rural areas beyond the cosmopolitan neighborhoods of Bogotá and Medellín. The extreme poor don’t seem to be any less poor. Colombia lost its investment grade rating under Duque’s administration. The president is left with few friends and many detractors, even within his own party.

On May 29, Colombians will go to the polls to vote for president. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two candidates will go to a runoff on June 19. According to law, the new president will be inaugurated August 7. Things can get worse, much worse. But as Duque’s four year term comes towards a close, there is a practical consensus in Colombia that things could have been much better.

Here are some of the reasons why:

• Police Brutality — The often-heavy handed police response to protesters has raised the temperature in the country. Colombians, especially the youth remember recent incidents of police brutality, including the macabre killing of law student Javier Ordóñez last year in a Bogotá police station which sparked protests against police brutality…sparking more police brutality in a counter-response! In this age of camera phones and social media, acts that would previously go unreported now are witnessed by millions. Multiple cases of police brutality have been witnessed and acknowledge even by the Colombian government’s own human rights ombudsman. These further angered protesters and poured fuel onto a fire that quite possibly would have burned out last week.
• “Let Them Eat…Eggs” — Marie Antoinette had her apocryphal “Let them eat cake” quote before ending up beheaded in revolutionary France. Colombia’s package of tax hikes and revenue measures was already going to have a challenge getting through Congress, but when Duque’s Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla made media rounds to talk up the need for fiscal reform (which in some form is absolutely necessary to pull Colombia back from a fiscal and monetary crisis), he may have condemned his own brainchild to derision and failure after a clown-show performance in an interview with media personality Vicky Dávila.
  

  “On the issue of eggs, it depends on its quality. Let’s say $1,800 COP (48 cents, US) a dozen or something like that.”

  Carrasquilla demonstrated how far out of touch he was with Colombian consumers when Davila asked him if he knew how much a dozen eggs cost in Colombia;  Carrasquilla proposed adding Colombia’s 19% VAT tax to basic foodstuffs like eggs and rice, also to gasoline and funerals, while exempting firearms and sugary soft drinks. Carrasquilla’s answer? “On the issue of eggs, it depends on its quality. Let’s say $1,800 COP (48 cents, US) a dozen or something like that.” A dozen eggs in Colombia costs an average of approximately $8,000 COP ($2.20 USD), though that price may fluctuate widely based on grade, packaging and purchase channel.  Colombians immediately seized on this to lambast Carrasquilla, Duque, and their political clan as inept elites completely detached, unaware of, and unconcerned with the struggles of most Colombians. Whether true or not, the public now had memes for their discontent. Carrasquilla was known for being media-shy and publicly reclusive, but he inadvertently became an effective spokesperson for his own opposition. Like Marie Antoinette, Carrasquilla was soon relieved of his duties…but kept his head.

• Broken Promises — Commitments the current administration made during massive strikes two years ago have not been made. Once strikers called off protests after President Duque promised to work with them, nothing happened. This time around, protesters don’t trust the president. Though he has stated that his fiscal reform package would be withdrawn, many simply don’t believe him. Percy Oyola, president of the strike organizing group called General Confederation of Workers (CGT), explained that the government “has had the opportunity to address and resolve claims since the large mobilizations carried out in November 2019, but it never set out to install a negotiating table and concertation. On the contrary, (Duque) always stigmatized and acted with violence against protesters.”
• Targeted assassinations — The anger over the Duque administration’s failure to address the rising massacres and targeted killings of social activists and ethnic leaders is at a boiling point. The current administration has done its best to sabotage the historic peace accords negotiated by former President Juan Manuel Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The Duque administration prefers to pretend the massacres aren’t happening, even conjuring up the term “collective homicides” in the apparent hope that calling a cat a dog can get it to bark.
• Close criminal ties — Duque’s political allies have lost credibility. His political godfather, former president and current Senator Alvaro Uribe left office in 2000 hailed as a hero who made Colombia safe from communist guerillas and open to investors and tourists. As the years have gone on however, revelations about human rights abuses during his term, including government massacres of innocent civilians not involved with insurgency have come surfaced, along with evidence from the none other than the US State Department that Uribe, in the US government’s words “almost certainly had dealings with the paramilitaries.”
  

  Photo of Marta Lucia Ramirez by Felipe Castaño, Vicepresidency of The Republic

  Uribe is currently facing charges and was for several weeks under house arrest for witness tampering and attempts at bribery.  His own brother Santiago Uribe has served 4 years in prison, charged with murder and forming the “12 Apostles” paramilitary death squad. His trial only ended in February, and the judge has yet to issue a ruling.Duque’s own Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez carefully crafted a political reputation as a crime fighter, but within the past two years it was revealed that she paid $150,000 USD to bail out her own brother, who was convicted in Miami for heroin trafficking. Just months before she tried unsuccessfully to sue investigative journalists into silence when Insight Crime revealed that she and her husband did a real estate deal with the alleged paramilitary commander and elusive drug kingpin Guillermo Acevedo, also known by his super-villain alias Memo Fantasma.

• Contempt for Human Rights — People are furious with the Duque administration’s human rights reputation. Duque’s political party, the Centro Democratico attacks anyone who raises the issue of human or civil rights as a communist or insurgent sympathizer. They have openly verbally attacked civil society organizations, and even government human rights agencies such as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), a tribunal tasked with adjudicating just punishments while reintegrating and reconciling former combatants with society. Retired Colombian General Luis Humberto Poveda called human rights activists “rats & assassins.” The United Nations stated it had grave concerns regarding persistent violence, misuse of the Colombian armed forces by the Ivan Duque administration, and the inability or lack of will by the government to implement the peace process agreed to by the previous administration of Juan Manuel Santos, or to protect human rights activists. Just over a year ago, the Colombian army was caught with an “enemies list” of social activists, journalists, and even elected Colombian senators!  Beyond the President’s own shrinking core of partisans, Colombians just don’t believe the current administration is serious about peace or security, especially security for those not aligned with President Duque.
• COVID Pandemic Failures — The health emergency and resulting economic emergency has been mismanaged according to many. Though the Duque Administration has taken the current pandemic seriously and not tried to deny it like former US President Trump or current President Jair Bolsonario in neighboring Brazil, The slow deployment and scarcity of vaccines has left many frustrated. Colombia is still vaccinating only the elderly, with some exceptions such as for health workers. No vaccines are available for the average Colombian, while many wealthier Colombians have flown abroad to get vaccinated. Currently, health curfews are in effect across many Colombian regions, and the tourism industry has been devastated, leaving many restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues permanently shuttered. Though the President talks often about the Coronavirus Pandemic, urging citizens to take precautions, he has not delivered with the vaccines. Most Colombians have no idea whatsoever when a vaccine will be available for them.
• Militarization — Strike organizers are demanding a “Demilitarization of the cities,” while legislators from his own Centro Democrático party are demanding that Duque impose an internal state of emergency and deploy the Colombian military to quash protests. So far Duque has resisted such a move, but were he to do so, violence and civil unrest would certainly spiral out of control. Though both are currently under the minister of defense, Colombia’s police force and military are separate, and the military is generally not used for urban civil policing. Colombia’s military is largely focused on combatting remaining Marxist insurgents, policing Colombia’s vast wilderness areas and sparsely populated regions, enforcing the borders, and contraband interdiction. The Colombian military is not trained for nor configured for quelling public disturbances. This evening, fake news was spreading across social media networks, with a doctored image of a decree from Duque declaring a national state of emergency and assuming special powers. The image was false, though Duque has made it clear that he would not rule out such actions if necessary.
• Angry Cabbies — Other specific groups with their own axes to grind have taken advantage of the protests and strikes to advocate for their own causes. Taxi drivers in the past days have implemented their “Turtle Plan” which intentionally snarls and blocks traffic. They are upset about a bill being considered in congress that would legalize ride sharing platforms such as Über. The services are technically illegal in Colombia but extremely popular and operate anyway.
• Ticked off Truckers — Truck drivers have also created massive blockages throughout the country. They say they are protesting Duque’s fiscal reform package, but also the increases in tolls and gasoline prices generally. Several toll booths on major thoroughfares have been torched, along with the controversial “fotomulta” traffic cameras that automatically issue fines and penalties to drivers. Truck drivers have stated that they don’t believe Duque when he says that he is withdrawing his tax package.
• Health Reform Legislation — A less famous but still controversial health reform bill has also been widely panned by members of the medical community, and strike leaders have demanded its retraction. It would reorganize and regionalize national health care delivery and add new powers to the national government to regulate and control distribution of health care. The new law would mandate the assignment of a primary care physician that some believe would serve as a medical gatekeeper.
• The “Communists!” — International interference, though many would be tempted to dismiss as far-fetched cannot be completely ruled out. Colombia currently is host to at least 2 million Venezuelan refugees, some of which have been confirmed and outed as spies and intelligence operatives of the Venezuelan government and their Russian allies. Last December, a spy scandal erupted in Bogotá when Russian spies were exposed and expelled from Colombia. Venezuelan government spies have also been exposed and detained by Colombian authorities, such as last year’s public case of Gerardo José Rojas Castillo. The most credible voice making such allegations come from none other than Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno. Serving as vice president under Socialist former president Rafael Correa and actually named after Vladimir Lenin, President Moreno has stated unequivocally that Ecuadorean intelligence has detected political and economic interference on the part of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. According to Moreno, Venezuelan government operatives are fomenting violence, crime and rioting to disrupt peaceful protests and provoke a strong government response. This allegation must be taken seriously by anyone with an understanding of the situation at the street level.

Los centros de investigación de Ecuador ?? y Colombia ?? detectaron la injerencia desde Venezuela de Nicolás Maduro en la violencia que azota a Colombia.

La entrevista: https://t.co/EKV4ECCna8

— Lenín Moreno (@Lenin) May 5, 2021

• Old Fashioned Thuggery — The common criminal element is also undoubtedly an ingredient, specifically with regard to the looting and acts of violence. Large protests will almost always have some criminal element hoping to take advantage of the situation to loot or take advantage of police distraction to commit other crimes. While Colombian professional cyclist Jarlinson Pantano was himself protesting the fiscal reform package along with the employees of his bicycle shop, looters took advantage of his absence and completely emptied his store of its inventory of bicycles and accessories. Common criminals take advantage of large protests and busy police to commit crimes, damaging the image of the protest movement in the process.

Gracias gamines de mierda por vaciar mi tienda ??? ratas, sale uno con la ilusión de marchar pacíficamente y se encuentra con unos desadactados de mierda ?? gracias por acabar el sueño de mi familia ???

— Jarlinson Pantano (@jarlinsonpantan) April 28, 2021

These national protests are expressions of discontent that go far beyond a package of tax hikes. There is widespread discontent and distrust of the current administration on a myriad of topics. Colombia must desperately pass some form of fiscal reform to balance the national budget, but President Duque and his Centro Democratico no longer have the political capital to sell such policies to Congress and the Colombian public. The Centro Democratico party has a small but vocal base of die-hard militants, but they are now a small minority in Colombia, holding only 19 of the country’s 108 senate seats, and 32 of Colombia’s 172 seats in the house of representatives.

Sergio Fajardo, former governor of Antioquia and former mayor of Medellín. (Photo Credit: Inter-American Dialogue)

Colombia’s attorney general Francisco Barbosa, a friend of the president, has brought criminal charges against former Medellín Mayor and Governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo for contract irregularities during his time as governor. Many across the political spectrum in Colombia have widely denounced the charges as a naked attempt to derail Fajardo’s presidential ambitions. Fajardo, a center-left politician and math professor came in third in the last presidential elections, setting up a runoff between Ivan Duque and former revolutionary and leftist senator Gustavo Petro. Many Colombians have expressed disdain for both the far-left ideas of Gustavo Petro, who served a disastrous term as mayor of Bogotá from 2012 to 2015, or the strident far-right authoritarianism represented by Alvaro Uribe’s (& Ivan Duque’s) Centro Democratic party.

Presidential elections take place next year. Hopefully Colombian politicians and the Colombian public can call a truce and calm tensions enough to battle through ballots in the upcoming months rather than through police bullets and the Molotov cocktails of thugs and rioters.

What did we leave out or get wrong? Please respectfully comment below under “share your thoughts!”

The report touches on everything from the COVID-19 Pandemic, the implementation (or lack thereof) of the historic 2016 peace accords, political corruption, and who might run for president in the next election.

The report’s co-author Cameron Wilson took time to speak with Finance Colombia executive editor Loren Moss about the many points covered by the report, including what to expect in the second half of Colombian President Ivan Duque’s term.

Finance Colombia: I’m here with Cameron Wilson, who along with Sergio Guzman, just completed an in-depth report on Colombian president Iván Duque’s midterm performance, his challenges and opportunities for the remainder of his administration. Cameron, thank you for joining us.

Cameron Wilson: Thanks for having me with you.

Finance Colombia: Let’s get into this fascinating in-depth report, obviously guys you spent a lot of time on it. First tell me a little about your background and how you came to be affiliated with Sergio and Colombia Risk Analysis.

Cameron Wilson: I grew up on the US east coast in Connecticut, and at the moment I’m a student at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, which is one of the handful of policy schools that people go to study international relations, economics, do some language training, it’s called SITES for short, it’s in DC, and it’s part of the community of Georgetown, Columbia, Harvard Kennedy School, and I wound up with Sergio because I was looking for something to do over the summer, like a work experience. This pandemic has upended all of our lives, I was going to be in Bogota for 12 weeks or so, basically helping this company with the product they put out on a monthly, sometimes a weekly basis, then I did some translation work as well, and that’s how I ended up with Sergio, looking for that opportunity over the summer.

Finance Colombia: Good, well it’s obviously a first-class report, let’s start into it. Colombia is a politically polarized country, you have a group of hard-left politicians and their supporters, you have a group of hard-right politicians and their supporters, and then you have a large maybe non-aligned electorate that seems to largely be fed up with both camps. So, can Duque get reelected in short and how? If he can.

Cameron Wilson: Well, to clarify, I think you’re probably asking more if a right-wing candidate can get reelected given that now presidents cannot be in consecutive terms, which is sort of an interesting wrinkle. In Colombian politics he could run again in the future, but not in 2022. He’d have to sit out and run again in 2026, I guess would be the earliest possible opportunity. But that seems very unlikely at the moment, given his approval ratings are at historically low levels and over the next two years it’s hard to view a scenario in which he will be able to attract more favorable public opinion, even if he somehow reaches out towards the middle from his sort of hard-right party, the Centro Democrático (political party established by former President Alvaro Uribe) so at this point it seems like a long shot that even if he would stand to reelection in 2026, or frankly that even his party would have even the successful side in the next presidential election.

Finance Colombia: We already saw one Centro Democrático senator announce that she was going to run, is there a chance? Could Uribe conceivably run? (Editor’s note: This interview was conducted shortly before Uribe was detained under house arrest on witness tampering charges)

Cameron Wilson: Well, I think that at the end of the second term back in 2010, there was a little legal wrangling over his ability to run again, and popular as he might have been at that moment, I think by and large Colombians were glad that he couldn’t stand for a third term, so he cannot run for a third term and also, the days of, like even president Juan Manuel Santos having two consecutive terms, those days are over as well, now for presidents to stand for a second term it has to be a non-consecutive term.

Finance Colombia: You know, I am here in Medellín and Uribe still has quite a considerable base of supporters.

Cameron Wilson: Yeah, it seems like his supporter base, for the most part, is socially conservative, a little bit older and probably had more experience with the massive disruption that was long-standing in the insurgency, on the lives of Colombians everywhere, and I’m sure you and most people that have seen this episode are sort of familiar with his biography, but that played a big role in his early life, and for better or worse the Colombian electorate now is sort of younger, the average age is around 30, and  so as we move on, one thing that sort of emerges is that the new population has less and less experience of the hardship that was caused, and that might be one reason why Uribe and his party’s demand for  retribution, there may be a little bit more discomfort with a transitional justice scheme for FARC dissidents, all of that makes them more uncomfortable in a way that’s less common for the people of my age I must say, and it’s only going to continue to be that way.

Finance Colombia: It sounds almost like you’re mirroring like the situation with Cuban-Americans in Miami, where there’s a generational divide between the older generation of Cuban people, who escaped, suffered first, and then maybe their children, the older generation had more of an emotional attachment, I think there’s a younger generation that seems to be more flexible, but they’re not necessarily pro Castro, but they don’t have the emotional role in his response, and are open to at least some kind of dialogue, even though that doesn’t mean they’re normalizing relationships or anything like that.

Cameron Wilson: You know, I don’t have any experience with that community, I haven’t been to Cuba in the way I’ve been to Colombia, but it sounds very similar, that’s interesting.

Finance Colombia: Yes, I think there’s a difference because I think you have people here, and I talk to people, even neighbors and if they’re older, let’s say older than 50, and they lived in those troubled times, then they have maybe especially—it also depends on if they were put in a rural area as well, because maybe Uribe, or the military or the government of that time came in cleaned up where you lived…or maybe they came and cleaned OUT where you lived, right? And so you can have a completely opposite perspective on things, if you look at the still unresolved case of a false positive and things like that, and even, really right now this week is the Supreme Court where he is under a legal cloud, and potentially facing charges, it’s hard to imagine where that might go, but it’s not like the view of him as a hero or savior is universal, even though there are some that definitively strongly believe that the base of the Centro Democrático party is made up of those supporters I would think.

Cameron Wilson: Yes, and I think that his approval ratings upon leaving office were 75-80% something like that, and now they’re down the 30%, and he might not care, people in this party might not be that bothered by his slide and approval ratings but I think part of that goes back to what you’re saying is experience of condensing the 80’s and the 90’s and even before that, is sort of fading into memory for people who are my age or college students, you know, and as long as the average age of the electorate for the country stays around 30, that’s not going to get reversed.

Finance Colombia: How is President Duque handling the coronavirus pandemic? He seems to be butting heads with Bogota’s Mayor Claudia López.

Cameron Wilson: In comparison to his counterparts in my country and  other parts of Latin America  You might say it is a admirable job in the sense that president Bolsonaro in Brazil  is being willfully ignorant of the science, and some people would say that AMLO (Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador) in Mexico has been the same way, and other people would say that president Trump is also adhered to that: “let’s not listen to experts or the science and also not recommend social distancing.” But at the same token, most of the earliest and strongest calls for lockdowns, for social distancing, for masks, were from Colombia’s mayors and not from president Duque, so in comparison to them it looks like he’s a little bit slow, and a little bit reckless even, but compared to his counterparts out of the country you might say “oh wow he’s sort of responsible, he’s been advocating for wearing masks, he puts his hand sanitizer out on his desk every night. So, he’s doing an okay job I suppose, to mention the crisis for the managing the health effects if you will, you know that people would argue about his economic response but that’s a separate question.

Finance Colombia: It’s an interesting phrase, “sort of responsible.” I don’t know if they want to make it a campaign phrase, but it’s interesting, I think that was seen doing an OK job until the COVID Fridays, as they were calling the “Dias Sin IVA” down here, the day without sales tax, especially the first one that turned into a fiasco, and stores were being shut down for overcrowding and then a resultant spike in the cases and now we see that we’ve gone from and a thousand deaths in over ten thousand deaths in the space of a month.

Cameron Wilson: I saw the images were from that, I guess there was that day and another one two weeks later and the footage was shocking, you know?

Finance Colombia: It was. It left an impression, economically obviously he’s under a lot of pressure, the economy is contracting, Colombia being a tourist country, tourism is completely shut down, the restaurants are closed except for carryout or delivery, the airlines, Avianca is obviously in bankruptcy as is LATAM, there are with two small exceptions there is no passenger air traffic, so he is under a lot of pressure I think, but a lot of people are saying the Claudia Lopez is already campaigning for president based on her response, and I don’t know if that’s honest, or cynical, or both, but she does seem to be a lot less conciliatory than she was during her campaign, and as the Mayor of Bogota she certainly does have a considerable megaphone. The Vice President, Martha Lucia Ramirez is not having so good of a year, is she?

Cameron Wilson: Well you said, I used an interesting phrase, “sort of responsible?” Well, “not having such a good year” is an interesting phrase in that context, yeah! On one hand, one thing that sort of dragged her down a few months ago was this revelation that she paid bail for her brother in Miami back in the 90’s. Her brother was convicted of some drug trafficking, I think it was heroin, and it was sort of a small amount, I want to say that there was like $150, (Editor’s note: She paid $150,000 bail for her brother) so it wasn’t—it didn’t rise to the scale of some corruption, but on the other hand, nobody knew it, it wasn’t in the public sphere until this time, and she’s had sort of a long career, right? She’s a little bit older than Duque, she’s been in the public eye for quite a while, and another thing that happened, sort of recently that if her very close followers of the country would have noticed, she threatened to file a lawsuit against Insight Crime.

Finance Colombia: She did bother, she filed not just a civil lawsuit, she filed criminal charges against Insight Crime in June, but Jeremy McDermott instead of going quietly, went public with the charges, which were widely condemned by journalists and human rights organizations, and I would imagine the many foreign governments that fund Insight Crime as well to be completely honest.

Cameron Wilson: And she’s backed down since then, right?

Finance Colombia: She’s retracted, but the thing that’s amazing is that even though she filed charges, her husband admitted the facts of McDermott’s story, which was interesting. That seemed to be a dumb move politically, because, it’s not that he published anything false. That’s not even a judgment call, her husband confirmed that they did the deal with this Memo Fantasma, you know this paramilitary narcotrafficker guy, and the interesting thing is that…Now, the Insight Crime reporting never accused the vice president or her husband of doing anything illegal or even unethical, they bought a lot from some guy, and you know, if you buy a house, you don’t necessarily know much about the people who sell you the house, right? It’s kind of surprising that they handled that so badly politically, but I think that what came to light is the kind of pressure and bullying that can take place when people are used operating in impunity, and don’t expect that scrutiny, right?

Cameron Wilson: Yes.

Finance Colombia: I notice that you guys listed as a potential candidate Pacho (Francisco) Santos, you think he might actually run?

Cameron Wilson: I think before the trouble that he found himself in last fall, I think you would have said that for sure, he would have run. To be clear he found himself in hot water when a recorded conversation from a restaurant in DC was made public by a Colombian newspaper, and he said some unflattering things about the US State Department, which might compromise his role as the main go-between Colombia’s government and the US, and so, to clarify, before that, which was last fall you would have said “yeah, he’ll for sure run” and he’s had an ambition to that for a while, and he’s been involved in Colombian politics for a while, and he lives in the right circles, you know, it’s quite a small group of people.

Finance Colombia: Yes.

Cameron Wilson: At the top of Colombian politics to begin with, and then, you know, amongst the different segments: Right, Center-left, Center, Center-right, you know the circles are even smaller and part of it is that there’s so few families and that the men go to the same high school in Bogota. So, you know, so he sort of checks all the boxes, and he for sure has still an amount of ambition, and I think that to a lot of observers, the question would be: “well what does Uribe want?” Basically who does Uribe think are the most attractive candidates for his party the next go round…the party has a history of pushing forward a few candidates, and sort of seeing which one happens to capture the imagination of the electorate that year, and for sure Pacho Santos would be in that conversation, if you will, but it’s a little bit hard to say that he, for sure, isn’t the guy.

Finance Colombia: You know, another possibility that you guys floated that really intrigued me was at Mauricio Cardenas, the former Finance Minister, who is very well respected and even liked, but he hasn’t—and maybe that this is by design, or by his personality—but he’s never really come across as a politician and that’s not to say he’s not a political operator, but he, as far as I know, he’s never held political office, he’s more of a technocrat, isn’t he?

Cameron Wilson: He’s an economist basically. There is one argument, or one school of thought that a technocrat might be able to steer clear let’s say of some of this, like tug-of-war politically back and forth, and some of that might be why a candidate like (Sergio) Fajardo is like “oh, I’m just a professor” you know, “I’m not cut from that same sort of cloth,” and so there’s an argument that perhaps would be able to navigate that dynamic a little bit better, and since he hasn’t really played that game to this point, he hasn’t spent his career criticizing the opposition that if the party, if the sort of conservative side of Colombian politics wanted to nominate a candidate, one that wasn’t so hard line one that might capture the middle of the electorate, he may be a worthwhile person for them to put forward.

Finance Colombia: I think that the hard part for him, not being a politician, is you can run into the same dangers of inexperience: Look at Daniel Quintero, here in Medellín, the mayor who seems like a nice enough guy but he’s already gotten himself in some hot water, making some politically inept moves.

Cameron Wilson: There’s some truth to that in the hard choices that they might advocate, you know, and I think that debate you’re talking about, there is a little bit playing out right now within mainstream economics. There’s a lot of what would be formerly like radically left economic ideas that are being connected in the policy right now, universal basic income, you know, debt levels that scare people, maybe less than they would have been in  the past, but certainly it’s like unknown territory and it’s kind of frightening  for some people who have a hard time looking past what they were taught if they were going to University of Chicago 30 years ago. And yes, that tug of war is going on within economic trade now. I mean, is it irresponsible for governments to keep subsidizing wages, implementing layoffs, even if it runs up the national debt? Some economists would say “just do it, press the button and go for it,” you know, “what are we so scared of, the only thing worse would be not doing anything.”

Finance Colombia: Everybody loves (John Maynard) Keynes and nobody loves (Herbert) Hoover in a recession, right? 

Cameron Wilson: Right, yes, so that debate of whether economists are always bringing bad news or not is sort of like what’s playing out right now in the news every day.

Finance Colombia: Good point, good point, so, where go from here? We’re a little bit past, I think halfway in Duque’s term or in the middle of a covid-19 coronavirus pandemic that’s hitting Colombia hard, other countries worse, but it still is significant here. The economy is contracting because of this and the economic contraction exacerbated by the collapse and demand for petroleum, well below Columbia’s lift cost, that’s to say the price to get out the ground into the refinery or into the pipelines is higher than the actual cost of petroleum right now, and we don’t see that bouncing back anytime in the short term, and that’s an important source of revenue for the Colombian government, so it leaves the president with fewer levers to pull.

Do you see him in the second half of his term distancing himself from his political patron Alvaro Uribe or will he cement a legacy as a faithful acolyte and beneficiary of his patron?

Cameron Wilson: Yes, well, the fundamental question is to sort of steer the country through this crisis, it is going to require him leaving behind some of the main policies of the Centro Democrático and a big part of that is the sort of commitment to fiscal responsibility, that I sort of alluded to just now, in the way the economists might be fighting with each other about what to do, so if he’s to adhere to this, you know, sort of more orthodox fiscal management, that is a tenure of his party and his finance minister adheres to, and that’ll be him, you know, being loyal to Uribe, to Uribismo, but also letting the country flounder a little bit longer, and people might think it is ideal, and if he is to continue to lift public spending and extend subsidies that have been given to people, extend the subsidies that have been given to businesses, that’ll be him moving towards the center and shepherding the country, towards what most observers would say is a more responsible way, and our expectation is that he’s probably not going to do that. So far in his presidency he’s been largely loyal to Uribismo. Part of that has been close ties to the business community, closer than some people might feel good about, and you can see that in how he opened the economy for two days for everybody go shopping in the middle of this pandemic, and part of that commitment has also been in this idea to sort of drag your feet, slow down the progress of the peace accord, so he’s been loyal to this point and therefore we don’t have a lot of reason to expect he’s going to move towards the middle.

Finance Colombia: Interesting, and I think that that might be the biggest danger to his legacy, is the post peace accord implementation, and whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not if you look at the increase in danger for social leaders for indigenous Colombians and people that are not even necessarily political actors or not even necessarily natural political opponents. I think it would be hard to argue anything other than negligence on the part of the government to protect non-combatants and even if you’re: Let’s suppose you’re anti-FARC, or which, I think a lot of people except for the FARC are anti-FARC, let’s suppose you’re anti-peace accords but then you have members of the FARC who say “Ok, we’re going to leave the FARC or we’re going to not be combatants anymore, we’re going to stop,”  and the government says “okay, we’re going to put you in this place and get you reintegrated in society, but then they go and get massacred, that doesn’t really—even if you don’t like the peace accords, if you don’t like the FARC, the last thing you want is people to go back and rearm themselves, so I think it’s kind of beyond comprehension other than just incompetence, or are there some kind of designs behind purposefully letting these people get slaughtered? I mean it would seem that the only reason behind not protecting people is to drive them back into arms.

Is it just negligence or is there a political motivation behind the foot dragging, not necessarily to implement faithfully every little bit of the peace accords because that might even be too much to expect politically, but in the negligence, or the apparent negligence and the lack of production in the increase in danger to even non-political non-combatants, indigenous leaders, social rights, people who are advocating non-political things?

Cameron Wilson: I think it is both of these things, I think with regards to the FARC, there’s no willingness to follow through on the provisions to provide them with the successful reintegration, and so it that looks like in the short-term is to build resettlement camps that have, schools and reasonable health care, and it took them a long time to get running water in a couple places and also put the camps in places that are safe, that aren’t close to still violent groups of people, and to provide them with protection, so there’s clear negligence to not follow through on all those promises.

With regards to the violence, the insecurity that’s confronting people, that’s affecting people who are not part of the FARC but who are in rural areas, who are agitating for clean water, roads, schools, electricity, basically an extended, expanded state presence. Part of the problem there is, I think, a bit of negligence, a little bit of, well, I think this is going to start to benefit participants in some kind of ways, but also another part of it too is this is the sort of long and hard and boring and challenging work that it’s going to take 10 to 15 years even in the best-case, because these areas are so remote that to expand the state presence requires a tremendous amount of patience, and if there’s one thing Colombia is lacking, even between a lot of the larger cities is good transportation, it’s sort of a weak spot of the country if you like.

Finance Colombia: True.

Cameron Wilson: That’s sort of like the long and hard and dirty work that’s going to take a long time no matter what but they’re not helping, they’re not sort of pushing that as aggressively as they could be, and in the meantime, while the state presence is sort of lacking in these areas, you’re talking about how social leaders, broadly speaking, people agitating for improvement in their security and economic conditions in all these areas, they’re sort of out in the wind so to speak without any help from government or without any protection and 100% it’s negligence.

There’s nothing else than negligence, that’s sort of leaving them so vulnerable, and in some cases more vulnerable during the lockdown because if they were targets before but maybe they were evading their attackers or evading pressure, this lockdown made it frighteningly easy to know where people were, and that’s just to say that they’re putting up with all kinds of threats and pressure and violence that they shouldn’t have to and I think that the government has no good reason to allow that to continue or not to make more efforts to prevent it.

Finance Colombia: Insightful. One last question, you were a professional PGA golfer. Is there any good golf in Colombia?

Cameron Wilson: I didn’t expect to get asked that! Yes, there is. One of the sort of unfortunate parts of golf in Latin America is that it happens to be confined to the very highest strata of society, and golf is sort of an affluent game all over the place but there’s public golf all over the U.S., it’s accessible, maybe not accessible enough but it’s accessible and in Colombia there are just private golf courses, and so as nice as they might be, and I’ve been to a few of them in Bogota, Medellin, and as beautiful as they might be, one of the things that I wish was different about golf in Latin America is that it was accessible to everyone. But you know, maybe that will change someday, I’m not hopeful about it but maybe it’ll change.

There are some beautiful clubs, and I think the consensus would be that the best one in Bogota would be called Los Lagartos, which has two golf courses in the middle of the city, and then another popular spot is called Country Club de Bogota, and that’s a cool place with a couple of nice golf courses and some cool amenities as well: bowling alleys, squash courts, clay tennis courts, a soccer field. That’s kind of an interesting spot with lot of other fun activities, but yeah, I wasn’t expecting to get asked that, so thanks for digging up my past!

Finance Colombia: No, I’m a tennis person myself, I’m not a golf person, but being born and raised in the same hometown of Jack Nicklaus, he’s just a giant and actually his firm designed the Karibana Golf Course up in Cartagena. I’m not really a golf player so I haven’t played the course, but I’ve been to Conrad Karibana by Hilton Resort and it’s a really lovely facility. I was there right before the pandemic started and I hope to go back reasonably soon, as soon as it’s safe to maybe play some tennis, but I was really impressed with their facilities, I don’t know if you played that course but it looked really nice.

Cameron Wilson: In my prior life, when I was playing golf professionally I wound up going to Colombia four times and I played an event at TPC Karibana, when it was brand new, in the spring of 2015, I think it was maybe like March of 2015, and it was beautiful, it’s an amazing spot and hopefully it’s a place where Colombians can go to enjoy some of their time, well they already go to Cartagena all the time, but hopefully it sort of adds one more thing to the city that will attract people and also it’s a really easy place to get to for Americans, it’s a couple hours from Florida, and you know, if anybody has hesitations or some concerns about going to Latin America and going to Colombia, which they shouldn’t by and large, but that’s a really great introduction to what can be so great about spending some time in the region.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit journal Insight Crime, which reports on and analyzes organized crime and corruption throughout Latin America and the Caribbean had been investigating Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo: A low-profile businessman based in Madrid, Spain, also known as “Memo Fantasma” (Will The Ghost) who according to Insight Crime is “a former drug trafficker and leader of the brutal paramilitary army known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia — AUC).”

During this investigation into Memo Fantasma, Insight Crime discovered that he participated in the construction project Torre 85, a luxury building in Bogotá’s exclusive El Retiro neighborhood developed by Ramirez’ husband Alvaro Rincón by providing a portion of the land and investing in the project, built by Rincón’s construction company Hitos Urbanos Limitada. Vice President Ramirez remains a shareholder in this company, according to Insight Crime. Rincón admitted to Insight Crime his dealings with Memo Fantasma but insisted that he was unaware of his history.

“I know what story you are working on”—Marta Lucia Ramirez in a message to McDermott just hours after he confronted Memo Fantasma in Spain

After Insight Crime revealed the connections, Vice President Ramirez did an interview in April with W Radio where she insisted:

“I must tell you that if all this information is correct, as it apparently is, what I most desire is for this investigation to advance.”

Insight Crime published a full transcript of her interview, presenting her side of the story, where she contradicted her own husband by saying they had no dealings with Memo Fantasma, who two weeks ago (Memo Fantasma) had eight properties valued at over $2 million USD seized by Colombian prosecutors (Torre 85 was not one of them).

The Criminal Charges

On July 24, Colombia’s Attorney General notified Insight Crime’s co-director and leader of the Memo Fantasma investigation Jeremy McDermott that Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez filed criminal charges on June 2 against him for “affecting her right to moral integrity, good name, dignity and honor.” The attorney general’s office “invited” McDermott to meet with Ramirez via videoconference to reconcile their differences before the legal proceedings went any further: This an apparent attempt to pressure McDermott to issue statements in defense of the Vice President (even though McDermott never accused Ramirez or her husband Rincón of any wrongdoing) and contradicting his reporting of her links to Memo Fantasma, whether she knew who he was or not.

In April, McDermott received a demand to remove mentions of any connections between Ramirez and Memo Fantasma from the law firm of Abelardo De la Espriella, the same attorneys so far unsuccessfully fighting to quash Matarife, a YouTube show that is vexing another of their powerful clients, former President and current Senator Alvaro Uribe; political patron of current Colombian President Ivan Duque. Vice President Ramirez served as then President Uribe’s defense minister from 2002 to 2003. Espriella has a history of attacking journalists and NGOs on behalf of Uribe, though US based media mammoth Univision has directly accused de la Espriella’s firm of corruption in the case of Nicolas Maduro ally Alex Saab, a Colombian fugitive and former de la Espriella client currently detained in Cape Verde and fighting extradition to the United States. According to the Univision report, de la Espriella’s firm bribed a police officer to provide information on Saab’s pending 2018 arrest by Colombian police so that he could escape—then turned the police officer in for bribery!

Rather than bowing to Ramirez’s tactics, McDermott went public with the Vice President’s charges against him, immediately publishing an article announcing the criminal complaint against him. A conviction would result in 16 to 54 months in prison and a fine of up to $375,000 USD under Colombian law.

The reaction from press freedom advocates was swift. The actions taken by Colombia’s Vice President were condemned by groups like Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom. Insight Crime, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and non-profit foundation also has diplomatic support, receiving funding from the governments of countries including the UK, Germany, Canada & Sweden, and academic institutions such as American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies.

Ramirez quickly felt the pressure, as evidenced by her direct response on Twitter to José Miguel Vivanco, the Executive Director, Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, who reminded her that her actions violate standards of freedom of expression; penal codes against defamation (though she was never defamed by McDermott) violate human rights norms, and the honor of public officials should never be protected with prison.

Shortly after the scolding by Vivanco, the Vice President announced on Twitter that she was withdrawing the charges against McDermott.

El caso de @jerrymcdermott me puso en una encrucijada y la defensa a mi buen nombre prevaleció. Hoy considero el caso superado y retiraré la denuncia penal. La libertad de prensa y la defensa del honor son derechos inalienables y baluarte de la democracia.

— Marta Lucía Ramírez (@mluciaramirez) July 29, 2020

“The case of @jeremymcdermott put me at a crossroad and the defense of my good name prevailed,” she announced, though Insight Crime has stood by its story in every detail, and further revelations show even closer family ties—convictions even for importing heroin into the United States by her own brother, which she bailed out during his proceedings.

“Today I consider the case overcome, and I will withdraw my penal charges. Liberty of press and the defense of honor are inalienable rights and bulwark of democracy,” she continued in her tweet.

McDermott stressed that while he is thankful, the dropping of the lawsuit does not change the fact that journalists in Colombia can still be threatened with legal action using the same law that was used against him. He questioned whether a Colombian journalist would have seen the same outcome if faced with a similar situation.

“We did not change a single word in the investigation, and this validates our work,” McDermott said from Medellín.

Headline photo: Felipe Castaño, Vicepresidency of The Republic

Lèse-majesté is a French term meaning “to do wrong to majesty” and defines an offense against the dignity of a reigning sovereign. In medieval countries and some dictatorships such as Iran & North Korea it is against the law to offend the ruler. If Colombia is to be considered a modern republic, it cannot be acceptable for anyone occupying Casa de Nariño (the presidential palace) to use their prosecutors or prisons to intimidate, menace & bully journalists simply for reporting verified & true but embarrassing facts. As the Washington Post reminds us: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

This article generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

InSight Crime spoke with Rincón, who admitted working with Acevedo but denied any knowledge of his criminal past. Vice President Ramírez also stated she was not familiar with Acevedo, but that she had asked former Colombian vice president and police chief, General Óscar Naranjo, to carry out a background check on him. InSight Crime has found no evidence of any direct links between Ramírez and Memo Fantasma.

On April 8, Colombia’s W Radio published interviews with InSight Crime Co-director Jeremy McDermott and Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez.

Here is a complete transcription of Ramírez’s interview:

W Radio (WR): Marta Lucía Ramírez, welcome to W, a good day to you.

Marta Lucía Ramírez (MR): Hello, thank you for your call.

WR: Madam Vice President, this story is not new for you. But it would be good to hear from you clearly once again. What the journalists from InSight Crime obtained, what we received from General Óscar Naranjo yesterday as well as from an agency that formerly investigated the matter … the investigations that were done into this partner who turned out to be a highly dangerous drug dealer with no case against him from Colombian authorities, without an indictment in the United States and who today is free in Madrid.

Naturally, for you, this must be a very difficult situation as he became a partner in a company in which you and your family are involved in. What can you tell us? How have you dealt with this topic since suspicions arose about the origins of Mr. Acevedo’s money?

MLR: Firstly, I want to thank you very much for this call, thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to the Colombian people. Unfortunately, it has almost become a habit that when accusations are made against a public official or somebody involved in politics, they are sadly not given the chance to explain what the accusations are about. That is why I first wanted to thank you.
Secondly, I must tell you that if all this information is correct, as it apparently is, what I most desire is for this investigation to advance. So that this man, any activities he may have carried out, and any relationship he may have had with drug trafficking, with paramilitaries, with whatever, can truly be known by the justice system, so that he may answer to Colombian justice.

SEE ALSO: Colombia News and Profiles

It is very unfortunate that our country still has so many gaps in its justice system, that cases like Odebrecht, or of the former prosecutor, are discovered by foreign judicial systems and not by our national one. This is something truly regrettable that we must correct. It must be a priority in our country to provide better tools to the Attorney General’s Office, to the judiciary and strengthen our entire judicial apparatus.

Thirdly, my entire life has been spent working with integrity and honesty. I am devoted to public service and that is why I am here. And it is not easy, it is not easy at all. You know very well that my work has been carried out with great difficulty. And I am here, among other things, because I want Colombians to have the right to a decent country, to a country where criminals respond to the law.

That is why I met Mr. Jeremy McDermott when I was defense minister. Jeremy is a journalist whom I met because he was always moving around the [criminal] underworld, investigating the paramilitaries, the guerrillas, drug trafficking. Of course, when I was defense minister, I was interested in knowing about the information he could provide us so that we could proceed against everyone, against guerrillas, drug traffickers and paramilitaries. I met him in 2003.

Later, in 2006, when I was no longer defense minister, and it is very important you are aware of that, my husband, who is a property developer, met this man. His construction company is always being sought after, being offered plots, being offered buildings, so they can buy them or join a project through a trust, as happened in this case.

Colombia’s Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez

In 2006, my husband, who knew General Naranjo due to my previous relationship with him at the Defense Ministry, always they in his office when there is someone they don’t know they try to investigate.That is why he called General Naranjo, who was director of intelligence at the time, and asked him if he happened to know this man. General Naranjo told him he would check and after two or three days, they told him that “there is nothing against this man, he is unknown, there’s nothing.” That was the due diligence carried out by the construction firm that, like many others, is always receiving people that offer plots.

I don’t know about what Mr. Jeremy McDermott is saying that, in order to launder his money,  [Acevedo] got into real estate financing. If that is the case, it must all be investigated. When I was made aware that Mr. Jeremy McDermott was carrying out an investigation into this case, I asked my husband if he knew this man. He did and he told me, “I think it’s a person from whom we bought a lot for a building on 85th Street with Carrera 14.”

SEE ALSO: ‘The Invisibles’ of the Drug World

And the truth is, let me tell you: what I want most of all now is for my name to be cleared as it must be, because I have always acted with integrity. But I cannot tell you the name of the person who told me about Jeremy McDermott’s investigation. I cannot tell you because this person gave me this information through their contacts in the United States. I must have integrity and loyalty and I will not give you the name. But I will ask this person to give you and your journalists internal assurances that they warned me about the investigation in Madrid, and that Mr. Acevedo did not warn me.

They warned me from Washington that Jeremy was investigating a plot purchased by my husband’s office, which is why I called him [McDermott] in October. As soon as I found out, I called him the next day to ask, “I want to know what is happening. They are telling me there is an investigation linked to a plot that my husband’s office had where they built a building. I want you to know that, for anything you might need, my husband, his partners, his office are available to provide any explanations and all the information you might need.” That is what happened.

He called my husband. They gave him all the information, they sent him all the documents, they showed him how the business had taken place, they showed him that it happened through a trust. This man [Acevedo] is not my husband’s partner, he never was my husband’s partner. People, sometimes, can deliver a plot for a project to be developed. From the moment a project is liquidated, each person takes the part due to them based on the value of the plot. But this man is not my husband’s partner.

SEE ALSO: Hunting the Ghost: a Face and a Name

The truth is that is all the information I have. My husband did the due diligence. They investigated when Jeremy McDermott called them last October, they checked again to see if there was any information they hadn’t received 10 years before. They asked a company to check, but this man has no open case against him, either in Colombia or in the United States.

I ask myself, how can one go about finding an entire file for someone who, as Mr. McDermott says so well, is apparently a ghost? This is totally unacceptable. Now, I want to tell you another thing, I don’t know who said that I recommended his children [Acevedo’s] to a school. I do not remember recommending anyone’s children, in Nueva Granada or in any school. I always criticize and reject the system of levers this country has. The truth is I have not made recommendations nor do I remember ever making any recommendations to any school in Bogotá. And all the rectors of all the schools will be able to confirm this.

I am a straightforward person. I want to tell the Colombian people that I am the person that they know me to be, a woman with character, a hard-working woman, an upright woman. A situation like this hurts me terribly, a situation like this, as one unfortunately does not have the tools needed to defend themselves

And do you know why? Because when a journalist writes a headline, they can say something is related to Marta Lucía Ramírez when it isn’t related to me. This is related to a transparent business method and a man who is not being investigated. And they cannot come at me in any way and try to tarnish my name in connection to a person that I have never met in my life. I never met him. I did not have a reason to meet him, because I do not have a construction firm that sees hundreds of lots and hundreds of landowners. As the wife of one of the partners, I do not have a relationship with the people who offer them business.

This is all the information that I have for you. Naturally, I feel that drug trafficking has already done enough damage to Colombia. Because there are families with children that became drug traffickers, there are families with children that are drug addicts, there are families that have been ruined by this evil business. And what I want more than anything is for all people involved in this business to respond before a court of law. This is all I have to say about this.

WR: Vice President, I obviously understand what this means to you, we sense that in your words. But regarding what is happening at this moment, we have to ask a few questions. When we spoke with Jeremy, he told us that he went to Spain and tried to contact this man [Acevedo]. At first the man did not want to speak with him and you later called him to ask him about the investigation.

So, what you’re saying is that this was a coincidence? Or, how did you know about Jeremy’s investigation?

MLR: Thank you very much for your question, because I just explained this and I must not have been clear, so it gives me an opportunity to say it twice. I became aware of Jeremy’s investigation in the month of October, I was informed about the investigation by someone in Washington, a person that has asked me not to reveal their name, and for this reason I will not give you their name.

I am an honest, loyal person and I am not going to break confidentiality when it’s asked of me. The person that provided me with the information is in Washington, I have asked them to speak internally with [W Radio journalists], with those he wants and to give them certainty. Obviously, the person that advised me was not Mr. Acevedo. And neither is it a coincidence. A little birdie did not bring me the information. A person in Washington provided me with the information. For this reason, I immediately called Jeremy to ask about the investigation and to tell him that my husband, their partners and their office, documents, accounting, everything, was totally available for the investigation.

SEE ALSO: The Ghost and His Paramilitary Army

And I think that it’s important when there is someone who has been doing an investigation for so long and has so much information, that he should file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office. What does not make sense at this point is to ask questions about this man and then, unfortunately, there is no investigation.

I believe that here in Colombia, what we need is that when people have information about drug trafficking, paramilitaries, guerrillas, criminals, corrupt officials, which I have fought my whole life against, that they act as good citizens and present these accusations to the authorities. So we can stop this impunity and this tolerance that, unfortunately, has often left many areas of the country in charge of crime.

WR: Marta Lucía, I can attest to what you have just said. I know who the person was that gave you this information and I can attest to the accuracy of what you have just said. I would add that in the midst of such uncomfortable circumstances, if there is something that has set you apart, it’s that you have always expressed the need to seek transparent behavior, precisely because of your aspirations to hold public office. This is something even your political rivals, who hold very different points of view, recognize. They are in agreement regarding your honor and honesty and have always recognized you to be unimpeachable.

MLR: Thank you very much for those words. The person who gave me the information about the research Jeremy was doing surely already had the opportunity to speak with you. And as you realized, you are a person who has very important ties in Washington, and for that reason, you asked me not to violate confidentiality because it would also hurt this person.

I have absolute clarity that all the information that is coming to light will be brought to the authorities and investigated further. Mr. Jeremy says he has all of the documentation, so we are going to go from yellow journalism to an investigation with judicial weight, which is really what we Colombians would like to see.

If I was going to tell him [McDermott] one thing, frankly, I have questions about the way in which he has handled this. If you’ve done so much research, how many people has this gentleman [Acevedo] done business with? If he dedicated himself to laundering money in the real estate sector, I imagine he did business with many other people. It’s important to mention all of those people, so as not to give the impression that this is being directed at just one person in order to harm that person, namely me.

All of the information he [McDermott] has about the business he [Acevedo] did with 1, 10, 50, or 100 people should be provided. This means people will know that there was no partnership or close relationship between Marta Lucía Ramírez or her husband and the man who was evidently laundering money through real estate. Unfortunately, this person was so protected, so hidden, so ghostly, that he was totally impossible to identify, even with greater due diligence than that which my husband’s office carried out.

During my time in the vice presidency, frankly, it’s impressed me and tremendously hurt me to see how they have tried to drag my name through the mud. For one, as you say, it’s because I have many flaws. I am intense, I talk too much, I have thousands of flaws. But nobody can accuse me of corruption or of patronage, or say that I am involved in the  underworld. I never have been.

SEE ALSO: The Ghost Loses Drug Trafficking Partners

It’s frustrated me many times to hear on the radio how some of your colleagues haven’t the slightest problem in saying that I am nepotistic and that I have done thousands of things that I’ve never done.

That is why I say to the Colombians who are hearing me now, this will be the only time I speak of this. I am the person they know. There is no deception. I am a person who can look anyone in the eye and say that what I have achieved in my life, I have achieved with hard work, integrity, truth, and with clarity that when serving this country it is done by providing an example of integrity.

WR: Madam Vice President, do you believe that you and your husband were robbed by this man [Acevedo] who, by all accounts, presented himself as a businessman? Do you think there were ulterior motives for him to target your family circle?

MLR: Look, first I don’t know if you are the person who did this article. I want to tell you, with all due respect, that an individual can always write headlines that attract attention but the headline that said I had a connection to this man [Acevedo] is totally wrong.

I insist, I don’t know him nor do I have a relationship with him. He approached a real estate firm. All the property developers who are hearing this program know what their business is like, they constantly receive plots of land, properties, people who offer exchanges or trades to them. This was a man who came to a firm through third parties, who offered one or several plots of land, I don’t know how many, and found that this was something they were interested in developing.

He hasn’t had any relationship with me at a family level. I have not met him, I have not greeted him, I have not been in his house, he has not been in mine, I have no personal relationship with him.

So I would ask that we make it clear that there isn’t any personal relationship between Mr. Acevedo and myself or my husband. A commercial relationship with a company where Álvaro Rincón is one of the partners is in no way a personal relationship.

WR: Madam Vice President, you have had respectful criticisms of the peace process and negotiations with the FARC. However, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz – JEP) had similar flaws, including people who tried to appear like paramilitaries when in reality they were drug traffickers.

But in this case, for years the authorities were unable to unmask this man and he ended up having legitimate dealings. Did the JEP fail to reveal such links with people who ultimately continued to launder dirty money and even participate in legal activities?

MLR: Unfortunately, the truth is that I believe Colombian society has failed. Colombian society has failed in fighting crime, drug trafficking, paramilitaries and the illegality that surrounds all this.

I think Colombia has unfortunately had a totally unacceptable tolerance for the gray areas. And unfortunately, congress hasn’t managed to pass reforms to the JEP, with either the depth or magnitude needed.

Unfortunately, we know of many cases in which criminals and the underworld have penetrated everything, including the authorities. This is a country that has problems at its root, a lack of values, a lack of ethics. Some institutions have unfortunately been permeated by criminal interests many times. This is why we’re in politics. This is why I’ve wanted to work in government. Because when somebody has the conviction and determination to get involved with this, you also face a lot of hostility, malice and disdain.

I believe there were failures in the JEP, there were failures with the FARC. If not, we would not have this embarrassing spectacle that those who are involved in drug trafficking, those who have just concluded a peace process with the government, have never truly apologized and have not made a complete break with drug trafficking.

Nobody ever turned over information about the routes, the cartels, the Mexican partners, the way in which the money is laundered, about properties in Colombia, in the Caribbean, and abroad. We are still missing a lot to be able to truly face this mafia but we must do it with honest politicians, honest judges and above all an honest society that understands that this is absolutely not the legacy we can leave to the young people of Colombia.

SEE ALSO: Tracking the Ghost: Follow the Money

This is the shameful stigma of a country where drug trafficking has damaged so many families. For families affected by drug addiction, for the young men, the women, the elderly used as drug mules. How many times have we seen this in airports? It is an infamous business, which has fed the paramilitaries and the guerrillas, the two machines which have ended the lives of many Colombians.

This is what has to end. To do that, one must have character, integrity and determination to see through all the fights that are needed.

Of course there were flaws in the JEP, of course there were flaws in the agreement with the FARC, of course there have been people who have not had the courage to see things through. And for this reason, we have to be united as a society to fight criminality.

WR: A person who managed to remain invisible to authorities, invisible to the justice and peace process, invisible to the United States, living today with no case, with no charge, with no indictment in Colombia or the United States, how can he not be invisible to a construction company?

But something which Jeremy said did grab my attention. This is the last question, vice president, I will not take up more of your time dedicated to helping people with the coronavirus. But something Jeremy said grabbed my attention: [your husband’s] company includes some very well-known names, some names that have business with many respectable Colombian businesspeople.

Do you or your husband remember who brought Acevedo to the company? Who introduced him and said, “here is a man with interesting plots that could serve for a development?” Who introduced him?

MLR: The truth is I don’t know, I can ask my husband. I believe it was another businessman who I think is called Carlos Gutiérrez, but I need to ask my husband. I am in my office right now, I can ask my husband right now so you can be sure of this.

It’s true there are people from the criminal underworld who managed to blend in and find accomplices, within institutions not only in Colombia but also in the United States.

How many times have we seen DEA agents show weakness towards drug trafficking money, allowing themselves to become corrupted?

SEE ALSO: The Ghost Lives the High Life in Madrid

That is why it seems to me that, with all these investigations and documents that Mr. McDermott must have, he should use them and take them to the Attorney General’s Office. They should be made known to judges in Colombia and abroad. This would make it not only a journalistic investigation but a legal process at the same time.

Right now, we cannot take pleasure in gossip, we must satisfy the country’s desire for justice and for integrity, shared by millions of Colombians. I am totally certain of this. One percent or less [of the population] are in the guerrillas, are in the paramilitaries. And unfortunately, we are the 99 percent who are carrying the loss of reputation due to the activities of others.

It is important that this is known and that any information from Mr. McDermott and his documents lead to justice, both nationally and internationally.

WR: Well, Jeremy gave precisely the same name you just mentioned. We will try to speak with this businessman and see what he remembers of how Memo Fantasma managed to be connected to so many places and so many people, as a facade for a criminal organization on the scale revealed by InSight Crime’s investigation.

MLR: Forgive me for interrupting, if he truly laundered money through plots of land and properties, it’s important to know how many people he did business with. Because it’s not possible that the only person he did business with was with this firm. Because when he did this, unfortunately it was very well hidden.

WR: No, no, no. There are many firms. Madam Vice President, I want to let you go and I want to collect the information that Alberto knows and that he has shared with you and that has come from the United States, because this man was in contact with the United States. There is a reason why today he [Acevedo] enjoys complete freedom and faces no indictment. Without an indictment, we will never find out whether or not he negotiated with a US agency.

But regardless of whether that information of how this man [Acevedo] knew or how you knew about this investigation, I do want to pick up on what you just said as well as your first answer. Hopefully, this case will be investigated, hopefully, the Justice and Peace file where he was mentioned will be reviewed, and [we’ll see] if it disappeared or if they didn’t pay attention to him. Investigate what needs to be investigated.

But in the case of your public record, since I have known you, we may not always agree, we can have differences on many issues, but as far as I am concerned, I say publicly that I have no doubts about your moral quality and your honor. That is above reproach, Madam Vice President.

MLR: As I said at the beginning, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to explain all this. I repeat, this has been very painful, as when one has political aspirations, people sadly feel empowered to wipe the floor with your name. And when one has made one’s name with hard work, with integrity, with effort, with sacrifice, nobody gave me anything. It has often been difficult for me how, through a microphone, they can use your name, ruin your reputation, laugh at you, question you, and not even bother to call you to ask if what they’re saying is true or if you have an explanation. That is what I most value about the opportunity you have given me.

WR: Thank you, Marta Lucía. Hopefully, this will all be cleared up, we will see the full truth about how this “invisible” operated, and the responsibility of those, if any, who knew about his illegal activities.

This article was generously shared by Insight Crime with Finance Colombia under a Creative Commons license. The original can be read here.