Confession is proof of electoral fraud for the benefit of organized crime in Colombia

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The news magazine Semana de Colombia, published the existence of audio recordings of conversations between Colombia’s ambassador in Venezuela Armando Benedetti and Laura Sarabia, President Gustavo Petro’s private secretary, that reveal a contribution of over 15 Million Colombian Pesos -roughly 4 Million U.S. Dollars- to the campaign that ultimately took Petro to power. Albeit both officials enjoyed Petro’s extreme trust, they were removed by Petro. Benedetti fled the country, leaving behind ample evidence of fraud and other crimes through which Organized Crime took the presidency of Colombia.

Semana de Colombia is a weekly published news journal magazine founded in 1946 by Alberto Lleras Camargo. This magazine has stood out for; publishing criminal complaints against notable narcotics’ trafficker Pablo Escobar Gaviria in the 80’s, publishing articles against President Ernesto Samper for financing his campaign with narcotics’ traffickers moneys or “Process 8000,” publishing articles critical of President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Other journals such as “The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Economist have referred to Semana de Colombia as the best news journal magazine in Latin America.”

Armando Alberto Benedetti Villaneda (1967) is a Colombian politician who studied journalism, was a Political Advisor of Eduardo Verano de la Rosa in 1991’s Constituent Assembly, was Secretary of The National Institute of Traffic and Transportation from 1992 to 1993, was named Deputy Director of Colombia’s National Health Resources Enterprise from 1996 to 1997. In 1998 he was elected to Bogota’s City Council, in 2002 he was elected as a liberal candidate to the national House of Representatives, in 2006 he was elected as Senator for the Party for the People’s Union, on 21 July of 2010 he was elected President of the Senate, and as strategist for Petro’s campaign. In August of 2022, Petro named him Colombia’s Ambassador in Venezuela to reestablish relations with the dictatorship of said country.

Laura Camila Sarabia Torres (1994) is a graduate from Colombia’s Nueva Granada Military University with a major in International Affairs and with a specialty in politics, electoral marketing, and campaign strategies. She was a political advisor to Colombia’s congress and an advisor of the “U’s Party” for six years, and Benedetti’s private secretary. She was the Chief of Strategy of Petro’s presidential campaign and was named by Petro as his Chief of Staff in July of 2022, she was known as “Petro’s right hand.” She had a very private life and was little known and through a column titled “We cannot love the Public Forces and at the same time pretend to perpetuate this war” she wrote, we learned she is the daughter of a Colombian Air Force Non-Commissioned Officer.

The audio recordings published by Semana de Colombia, are conversations between Benedetti and Sarabia in which, amongst other things, Benedetti expresses “Nobody leaves me stranded and ignores me for three hours, I a man that held 100 meetings in one campaign, a man who was able to get 15,000 million and now . . . that I was able to get all funding sponsorship, and you know it better than anyone else, so we could go to hotels, so that we could come over here when needed and all the rest.” In the same recordings we can hear the persons who were behind those monies “were not businessmen,” and a reminder to Sarabia: “Petro can be, and is, a son-of-a-bitch and we got to meet him a year ago, and you -amongst other things- you didn’t even want us to help him.”

As transcribed by Semana de Colombia, the recordings are very poignant and emotional but are, nevertheless, very important confessions of Benedetti who states: “. . . Is that you want me to say who the son-of-a-bitch was the one that put up the money that went to the Pacific. Yesterday all of you mistreated me as a piece of shit and that is something you just do not do to Benedetti.” Speaking from a place he calls “the coast,” perhaps his embassy in Venezuela, Benedetti tells Sarabia: “At the very instant I say who put up the money, here at the coast, I already know what is going to get exposed, you do not know crap about history, read how the son-of-a-bitch started the 8,000 and why it got started, that is the key to everything that is going to happen to you . . . we will see how goes when anyone says who was the one who put up the moneys here at the coast.”

After the recordings were made public, Petro in his Twitter account cited by the Cable News Network (CNN) refers to “Narcos” when he wrote: “We have not accepted any black mail for public positions or contracts, neither have we received -while we were campaigning- money from people related to narcotics’ trafficking, least of all we have not managed in our accountability sums such as 15,000 million. I neither accept blackmail, nor see politics as a forum for personal favors.”

A great scandal, but in essence these are confessions and proof that the organized crime contributed and has taken both the presidency and the government of Colombia. Congress and the Attorney General’s office have received the criminal complaints and have announced they will investigate. The government has undertaken an intense campaign of damage control and protection of Petro that included Cuba’s quick maneuver to hasten a Cease-Fire with the guerrilla’s National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish) under the shadow and pressure of dictator Diaz-Canel.

As INFOBAE has dubbed it, this is Colombia’s Watergate, or perhaps even worse, but it all depends and is up to Colombian democratic institutions for organized crime not to continue wielding power from the presidency, to coverup its crimes, and to not grant impunity to Americas’ dictators.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Inter American Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas