Former Colombian presidential candidate indicted for Odebrecht payments

Bogotá, Jul 11.- The Colombian Prosecutor's Office charged today the former presidential candidate of the right-wing Democratic Center, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, with various charges for receiving payments from the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht in the 2014 electoral campaign.

According to the prosecutor, Zuluaga would have accepted for his campaign in 2014 an illegal contribution of 1.61 million dollars from the aforementioned company.

For those elections, where he lost to Juan Manuel Santos, Zuluaga would have met with the company's representative in Colombia, Eleuberto Antonio Martorelli, to pay that amount to the publicist José Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mendoça, known as "Duda" Mendoça.

Pursuant to the agreement, between June and July of that year, Odebrecht transferred the aforementioned amount of dollars to the accounts of a company that the well-known publicist had in Panama.

With this action, article 109 of the Constitution would have been violated, which prohibits political parties, movements and significant groups of citizens from receiving financing from foreign natural or legal persons for electoral campaigns, said the public ministry.

“The evidence shows that Óscar Iván Zuluaga was aware of the illegal contribution and presented an accounting with such omission before the National Electoral Council (CNE), in order to obtain a replacement of votes for more than 25 billion pesos (about six million dollars at the current exchange rate), as indeed happened,” it was added.

In addition, the Prosecutor's Office established that the candidate and his son David Zualuaga, who was the campaign manager, in the statements made to the CNE concealed information about Odebrecth's economic collaboration.

Given this, the prosecutor charged Zuluaga with the charges of falsehood in a private document, three of procedural fraud and one of illicit enrichment of individuals; while the son is attributed an act of procedural fraud.

Both defendants did not accept the aforementioned charges that, according to various investigations, apply to former presidents Álvaro Uribe, founder of Centro Democrático, and Iván Duque. (Text: PL) (Photo: El colombiano.com)