The prosecutor’s office also linked 16 people to the corruption scandal

The Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, has announced that 16 people have been linked to the Odebrecht scandal in Colombia. With this decision, the head of the intelligence agency promised that 60 people will already face criminal charges in the country for receiving and handling bribes sent from Brazil to benefit the multinational construction company, along with infrastructure contracts.

This announcement was made after a meeting with them A Full Bench of the Supreme Court, In it he gave an assessment of the measures taken against corruption. “Tomorrow, there will be 16 new defendants, and with that we will already reach 33 charges,” Barbosa revealed.

Likewise, he warned that the Odebrecht case in Colombia was almost closed in 2019. However, after several investigations, they were linked with others who had knowledge, involvement and responsibility in this corrupt network, for which several former congressmen, businessmen, contractors, individuals and even a former deputy minister have already been convicted.

“I dedicated myself to the country in that struggle Against corruption, I am going to leave in these eleven months and fulfill that promise”, said the Attorney General after the meeting held at the Palace of Justice in the center of Bogotá.

In December 2016, Marcelo Odebrecht, the head of the multinational company, admitted to US judicial authorities that he used bribes in all Latin American countries to directly obtain public works contracts. In the case of Colombia, it was noted that eleven million dollars were transferred to obtain contracts related to the Ruta del Sol II project.

In order to achieve their goals, large sums of money were sent to high-ranking officials handling the deal Bidding method Odebrecht benefits from this. In the first batch, Gabriel García Morales, former head of the National Concessions Company (Inco) and former vice minister of transport, will give $4.5 million to the provisional union for the Ruta del Sol II contract. The largest shareholder is Odebrecht.

Subsequently, former senator Otto Nicholas Bula Bula was added, who was considered by the Attorney General’s Office to have “moved” 6.5 million dollars in Congress, including the contract for the Okana job -Camarra. For this, he used his influence in the Senate so that the required bidding process would not take place.

Both Garcia Morales and Bula Signed a preliminary agreement with the public prosecutor’s office In it they admitted their participation in these corrupt practices and promised to cooperate with the authorities within other criminal and disciplinary proceedings. The former deputy minister was sentenced to 5 years in prison and the former senator was sentenced to 5 years and 4 months in prison.

Through their statements, they were linked to other protagonists, including the powerful U Party senator Bernardo Miguel Elias Vidal, known as El Ñoño, who was captured in August 2017. Although at one point he pleaded not guilty, an unprecedented move in the Supreme Court, he accepted full responsibility for the events.

In 2018, he was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison. The former senator from La Yu Party expressed his willingness to continue to cooperate with judicial authorities to clarify this truth about corruption.

In August 2021, Elias received his second sentence: eight years and four months in prison, when he had already turned on the fan and contacted other people related to bribes sent by Otbrecht to benefit from highway contracts in the country, including former President Juan Manuel Santos.

On this occasion, he was convicted of aggravated conspiracy and money laundering offences, to which he also pleaded guilty. On that occasion, he was fined 13,600 million pesos.