The Colombian Prosecutor’s Office accused Álvaro Uribe before a judge this Friday for the crimes of bribery, procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings, so the former president becomes accused in the case of alleged bribery of witnesses and procedural fraud.

It is the first time that the Prosecutor’s Office has filed charges against Uribe (2002-2010), which were accepted by Judge 44 of criminal knowledge of Bogotá, Sandra Liliana Heredia, who ruled that “from this moment (the former president) acquires the status of accused.”

According to the judge’s decision, the process against Uribe begins formally and if guilty the head of the Democratic Center can be sentenced to between 6 and 12 years in prison.

The accusation comes after the togada denied the request for the nullity of the process against the former president by considering it “absolutely inappropriate,” so “its rejection is imposed flatly, a decision against which no appeal is appropriate.”

Likewise, the judge accepted as victims of the case Senator Iván Cepeda and former attorneys general Jorge Perdomo and Eduardo Montealegre, as well as Deyanira Gómez, former wife of paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, involved in the case.

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These two decisions were celebrated by Cepeda’s lawyer, Reinaldo Villalba, who assured that “they are decisions that recognize not only the condition of the victims but the need for the victims to have access to justice and there defend and claim their rights.”

The prosecutor who leads the case, Gilberto Villarreal, accused Uribe as “determinator of the successive homogeneous contest of three bribery crimes in criminal proceedings” because for “the benefit of himself or a third party he gives or promises a utility to a person who witnessed a criminal act to refrain from running to testify or to totally or partially miss the truth.”

He also accused him of “sucessive homogeneous contest of two courts of procedural fraud,” that is, because “by any fraudulent means it misleads a public servant to obtain a sentence, resolution or administrative act contrary to the law.”

Also as a “determinator of the crime of bribery” because he delivered or promised “money or other utility to a witness so that he totally or partially lacks the truth or the street in his testimony.”

This case dates back to 2012 when Uribe, who was a senator, sued Cepeda for alleged manipulation of witnesses, who at that time was preparing a complaint in Congress against him for alleged links with paramilitarism.

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Contrary to what was expected by Uribe, the Supreme Court of Justice did not open an investigation against the left-wing congressman and, instead, initiated a trial against Uribe for manipulation of witnesses.

The accusation of bribery has to do with the alleged payment of bribes to Carlos Enrique Vélez and Juan Guillermo Monsalve, who are imprisoned in the prisons of Palmira, and La Picota in Bogotá, respectively.

Monsalve, a former paramilitary, assured that there was a whole strategy to approach him and convince him to testify against Cepeda.

Uribe has been saying for years that it is a case against him that has political motives and that lacks evidence.

Uribe resigned his senator’s seat in August 2020 to stop being assigned and that his case was passed to ordinary justice and then the Prosecutor’s Office decided that there was no evidence to prosecute him judicially.

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That is why he requested up to two occasions the preclusion of the case, which was denied both by the courts of first instance presented and by the High Court of Bogotá.

However, prosecutor Villarreal took over the case on January 16 and on April 9 he affirmed that based on the physical evidence and evidence he determined that there were reasons to accuse Uribe, which were the conclusions of the judges when denying the pre-preclusion.