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A report, which accounts for the many irregularities that would have been incurred in the express degree of the liberal senator in 2019, suggests that the diploma that accredits the politician as a legal professional should be withdrawn.
At the end of 2019, the complaints about the alleged irregularities in the degree as lawyer of Senator Julián Bedoya, recognized at that time for having been the investigating representative of the investigation against former magistrate Jorge Pretelt in the case of Fidupetrol, were known. And it is that the Antioqueño politician had achieved a feat almost impossible to imitate: he returned to the university a little less than a decade after having left it to present and pass 16 exams between sufficiency and preparatory in record time -only four days-.
The fact made the Ministry of Education, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Attorney General’s Office put the magnifying glass on the University of Medellín -alma mater de Bedoya-; the rector of the institution at that time, Néstor Hincapié; the professors who participated in the Senator’s academic marathon; and some directors of the institution. The media scandal claimed the heads of Hincapié and the president of the council, councilor Aura Marleny Arcila, and also brought one of the moments of greatest instability in the university institution.
After these movements in early 2020, no major advances are known in the cases brought by the authorities. However, a recent 57-page report from the Third Commission on Disciplinary, Statutory and Internal Affairs of the University of Medellín was released, promising to stir the waters of the case again.
The document speaks of such a degree of irregularities in the process of admission, approval of subjects and graduation of Julián Bedoya that the only conclusion is to request “the judicial declaration of the nullity of that administrative act that granted the title of lawyer to the student Julián Bedoya Pulgarín and that it was irregularly issued by the university ”.
El Espectador learned of the document in its entirety, which is based on a detailed study of all the evidence delivered by the University of Medellín to each of the authorities that is prosecuting the alleged irregularities in the proclamation of Bedoya Pulgarín as a professional lawyer. There the irregularities are enunciated both in the reinstatement of the now senator and in the presentation of the exams that he passed in record time.
The first anomalies found by the commission account for two requests for Bedoya’s reinstatement, one in 2014 and one in 2018, the latter being the one that allowed him to return to the classroom to obtain the degree. In the first case, dated July 14, 2014, a letter from the senator is reported, which does not have his signature, in which he asks the Academic Council to allow him to resume his studies, which began in 2001, in order to obtain the professional title. The answer was given the same day and was affirmative, although Bedoya did not return that year to the University of Medellín.
The request and the response have an appearance of normality. However, the analysis shows that said letter arrived four hours after the Academic Council ended the session destined to study the reinstatement cases. The minutes of that meeting include the reentry requests discussed that day and none of them appears the name of the Antioquia politician.
Furthermore, the directors who investigated the case highlighted that the reinstatement requests that were approved during the Academic Council meeting only received a response communication on July 15, one day after they were approved, while that of Bedoya Pulgarín, surprisingly, was answered the same July 14. Moreover, the investigation reveals a letter that arrived two hours before that of the liberal senator, but still out of time, so its study was postponed until the session of July 28, 2014.
On the other hand, the report states that the answer given to Bedoya “does not use the same minute or the same font as the other answers,” and neither does it have an internal university filing cabinet. For the investigating commission, apparently this first request is made up and the main reason is that the university regulations only allow 5 years of waiting for a student to return to the university without a special study, while the Antioqueno politician had been since 2009 out of the classroom. This means that your reinstatement in 2018 would have been irregular.
But this is not the only irregularity that the investigation would have found in the reinstatement made two years ago. Referring to the regulation, the evaluated documents indicated that after 5 years of being separated from the university, the possible return had to be made by the Council of the Faculty of Law. This had to define the viability of the action, under which curriculum it would be received and which subjects would be validated and which ones it should repeat. However, in the Bedoya case, it was the Academic Council that gave him the guarantee to return.
“If the Council of the Faculty of Law had been consulted, Julián Bedoya Pulgarín would have been forced to take and pass some eight (8) additional subjects and also pass the exams designed to verify whether the student was proficient in a second language or not”, reads the document known by this newspaper.
In addition, along the same lines, the administrators drew attention to the fact that Bedoya’s last request for reinstatement was dated October 8, but the guarantees refer to the minutes of September 27. “In other words, it is strange to this commission that the decision is prior to the applications,” add the councilors who made the administrative report.
In this same section, it is highlighted that the reinstatement of the former representative was made with some alleged powers granted to the Undersecretary of the University, but in the minutes it is observed that these extraordinary powers were only arranged to set the prices of tuition
The irregularities would also point to the deficiencies and preparations presented by Julián Bedoya. Against the first point, the document states that 9 of the 12 exams would not be valid. The reason for this is that in these tests the regulations of the institution were breached, which establish that “the proficiency test will consist, in turn, of an oral and a written test, practiced and evaluated by two teachers of the subject (…) The final grade, which will be the arithmetic average of both tests, cannot be less than three and five (3.5) to be considered approved ”.
According to the investigation, “direct violations” of the regulations were found in the 9 tests that, in the opinion of the directors, would imply their “absolute nullity”. Among the buts reviewed, it is found that several of the deficiencies were not practiced by teachers who taught this subject. On many occasions it was only fulfilled that one was and on other occasions none of the examiners was the ideal one.
On the other hand, in many of the tests only a single grade is given, and the requirement that the final grade be an average between the oral and written exam is not satisfied. Along the same lines, from the directives it is noted that the written copies of the exams presented by Bedoya were not kept to say whether or not he had the knowledge to pass the subject.
Regarding the preparatory examinations required for all lawyers so that they can obtain their degree, the irregularities would begin in the fact that Senator Bedoya presented three of these tests when the regulation states that “each examinee has the right to present a single exam, at his / her own expense. election in the respective month ”. And, although special permission can be given by the Faculty Council, it does not appear in the documents presented by the university itself.
In this same section, it is striking that the same evaluator appears in all the preparatory tests, who is John Mario Ferrer from the area of politicians. The evaluation made by the administrative staff expresses that this characteristic is striking because “they have always been professors of the corresponding area, who have practiced the evaluations and served as juries” and the exams presented by the senator were from more areas than that of “politicians” .
This same anomaly occurred with two other professors, who appear as evaluators of preparatory areas of which they did not belong. But in this case, what the University researchers emphasized the most is that in two of the exam days, Bedoya presented several tests and preparatory tests that in real time would add up to about 11 hours per day and approved all of them.
“It draws our attention, because it is not normal for a student to pass them all with a grade point average equivalent to four ─ in both exams, both oral and written ─ and without failing even a single subject,” said the three administrators who were in charge of the investigations.
The last point in which alleged irregularities were detected was in the validation of the degree work. Instead of a degree work, a requirement to obtain the degree, the students of the University of Medellín can participate in a research project, so Bedoya was linked to an investigation carried out by Professor Jhon Mario Ferrer.
However, according to the known document, this project has been carried out by the teacher since 2015 and in February 2017 its publication was already recommended, so much so that in that same year it already had an ISBN and the following year, in September, the last tests of impression, just when Bedoya was just rejoining the University.
Julián Bedoya allegedly collaborated with some bibliographic files, but according to the commission, this is not credible and that work is not enough to meet the demands of the work. “It is indisputable that, for the month of October 2018 ─ month in which, according to Ferrer Murillo’s saying, Bedoya Pulgarín was linked to the investigation ─ this, Murillo’s work, not Bedoya’s, had finished and nothing, consequently , the then student, Bedoya Pulgarín, could contribute to that work, much less the aforementioned bibliographic files ”, says the text.
The fact that this research was known has caused great controversy at the University, especially since only two of the three conciliar investigators endorsed the report and its conclusions. The third was in charge of presenting his own rescue and conclusions. Now, both reports will have to be debated by the Consiliate of the University of Medellín, which will have to determine their validity and if they take their suggestions.
The truth is that, as some connoisseurs of the internal structure of the institution commented, several of the members of this cell are still from the wing of Néstor Hincapié, so they doubt that they accept what was expressed by the report that reveals alleged irregularities in the degree of liberal senator Julián Bedoya.
On the other hand, when the existence of the investigation was known, the University of Medellín ruled to assure that the administrative investigation was an order from the consulate itself and that until now the reports submitted are being studied, both the documents and the more than 3,000 folios used for its elaboration. “Once the remaining eight Councilors have sufficient knowledge on the matter, the case will be submitted to the plenary,” says a statement from the Antioquia university.
The truth is that the authorities’ investigations are still pending, but this report leaves in a very bad place the grade obtained by Senator Julián Bedoya, and therefore himself. So much so that some of the movements that denounced the alleged irregularities in his case are already asking him to resign from his seat.
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