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- Left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s 36-year-old son, Nicolas, was charged Tuesday with cash laundering and illicit enrichment.
- The youthful Petro pleaded responsible to the fees, which have raised questions concerning the integrity of his father’s technique of financing his presidential marketing campaign.
- Alleged illicit purchases made by the president’s son embrace a Barranquilla mansion, a luxurious condominium and a Mercedes-Benz SUV.
The son of Colombia’s president was charged Tuesday with money laundering and illicit enrichment at a listening to the place prosecutors stated he took hundreds of {dollars} from drug traffickers and used it to purchase luxurious houses and costly vehicles.
Nicolas Petro, 36, pleaded harmless to the fees, which have raised questions concerning the financing of President Gustavo Petro’s 2022 presidential marketing campaign. This has uncovered the leftist chief to assaults from opposition events, which have develop into more and more reluctant to cooperate with the president’s legislative agenda.
The investigation in opposition to Nicolas Petro stems from a surprising declaration made by his ex-wife Daysuris Vasquez to native information journal Semana in March.
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Within the interview, Vasquez stated she was current at conferences the place Nicolas Petro organized a 600 million peso (USD $150,000) donation from a politician who was as soon as convicted in Washington for drug trafficking, and who needed to contribute to Gustavo Petro’s 2022 presidential marketing campaign.
Vasquez accused her ex-husband of pocketing the cash, and stated that Petro’s presidential marketing campaign had no data of the donation.
In Tuesday’s listening to, prosecutors accused the youthful Petro of utilizing illicit funds to purchase a mansion within the metropolis of Barranquilla, an opulent condominium and a Mercedes-Benz SUV. They stated that he registered the properties below the names of relations as a way to keep away from investigations from tax officers.
Left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s son, Nicolas, was charged Tuesday with cash laundering. (AP Picture/Fernando Vergara)
Prosecutors stated that Nicolas Petro, who was a legislator representing a northern coastal area, would have wanted to earn ten occasions his wage as a way to justify his bills in 2022.
Prosecutors additionally accused Vasquez of co-operating within the cash laundering scheme, and stated she helped her husband to cover hundreds of {dollars} in money in suitcases that the couple stored at their residence.
The couple, who not reside collectively, have been arrested on Saturday evening and have been held on the headquarters of the Chief Prosecutor’s workplace in Bogotá, from the place they attended Tuesday’s listening to.
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President Petro stated that he wouldn’t intrude with the investigation, and wrote a message on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, wherein he stated that he hoped his son would “replicate on his errors.”
The president was hit by one other corruption scandal in June, when his former ambassador to Venezuela stated in voice messages that Petro’s presidential marketing campaign broke finance limits, and hinted that it may have acquired cash from drug traffickers. Petro denied these prices and stated that every one donations to his presidential marketing campaign have been rigorously scrutinized.
The scandals have dented Petro’s reputation amongst voters in Colombia, the place incidents linking political campaigns to drug traffickers convey again recollections of the Nineteen Nineties, a violent decade wherein a former president was accused of taking cash from the Cali cartel and had his U.S. visa cancelled.
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Throughout his first 12 months in workplace, Petro has managed to dealer a ceasefire with the nation’s largest insurgent group. However has did not get the nation’s congress to approve reforms to the nation’s well being system, pensions and labor legal guidelines that he introduced originally of his time period.
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