International

Colombia: President Petro’s son does not accept charges of illicit enrichment and money laundering

Photo: AP

August 2|

The son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro did not accept on Tuesday the charges of illicit enrichment and money laundering of which he has been accused by judicial authorities.

Nicolás Petro rejected the charges in a hearing in which the Attorney General’s Office set out the elements against him.

The son of the head of state was captured on Saturday in Barranquilla, a city in the north of the country. His ex-wife, Daysuris del Carmen Vásquez, was also arrested that day.

Nicolás Petro – who serves as a deputy of the Departmental Assembly of Atlántico, in northern Colombia – is accused by judicial authorities of having illegally increased his wealth.

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The investigation by the Attorney General’s Office began after allegations by his ex-wife, who claimed that she had received money for her father’s presidential campaign but kept those resources for herself.

The Attorney General’s Office exposed on Tuesday that the illegal increase in the assets of the president’s son would have reached $270,000 in 2022, the same year of the campaign in which his father won the head of state.

In the hearing the prosecutor in charge of the case, Mario Andrés Burgos, made a comparison between Nicolás Petro’s income in his work as departmental assemblyman and the expenses he had last year and concluded that he earned around $71,000 but his expenses amounted to about $308,000. According to Burgos, the Attorney General’s Office found no other income declared by Nicolás Petro nor financial credits that would justify that level of spending.

At the same time he exposed the allegations made by his ex-wife before the investigating entity. According to these accusations, Nicolás Petro would have received around $270,000, in different payments, from Samuel Santander Lopesierra, convicted in Colombia and who served a prison sentence in the United States for crimes related to drug trafficking.

Lopesierra is running for mayor of Maicao in La Guajira, in the north of the country, in an election next October.

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According to Vasquez’s allegations, her ex-husband also allegedly received money from Alfonso del Cristo “El Turco” Hilsaca through his son, Gabriel Hilsaca. “El turco” Hilsaca is being prosecuted for homicide and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Both payments, according to the president’s former daughter-in-law, were for Gustavo Petro’s presidential campaign, but according to prosecutor Burgos, Nicolás Petro “never” delivered that money but bought goods. Through these acquisitions -according to the Attorney General’s Office-, the president’s son would have sought to “give the appearance of legality” to the money received, which would constitute the crime of money laundering.

Now the judge in charge of the case must decide whether or not to grant the preventive detention requested by the Attorney General’s Office.

International

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“The world must react. So far, there has been no strong response,” Zelenski lamented in a social media statement.

“We must act. We must pressure. We must push Russia towards real peace, which is only achievable through strength,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Thursday that Russia had launched a new type of hypersonic ballistic missile against Ukraine in its “non-nuclear configuration.”

International

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International

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These remarks come after a day of heightened tensions, during which Russia launched a state-of-the-art medium-range missile designed to carry a nuclear warhead. However, this particular missile was loaded with conventional explosives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the missile strike, calling it the action of a “deranged neighbor” using Ukraine as a “military testing ground.”

Earlier, Ukraine accused Russia of attacking the central-eastern city of Dnipro with a missile exhibiting “all the characteristics” of an intercontinental missile, an unprecedented development in the ongoing conflict.