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On February 10, Fauner Barahona, an ex-paramilitary who wrote to the Supreme Court in 2018 about alleged pressure from Iván Cepeda to witnesses to testify against Álvaro Uribe, spoke under oath. The Court did not give him credibility, but, before the Prosecutor’s Office, “Racumín” ratified his version.
Fauner José Barahona, known as Racumin, is one of the ex-paramilitaries who sent letters to the Supreme Court in 2018, when the magistrates refrained from investigating Senator Iván Cepeda for witness tampering and, instead, ordered the opening of a process against former President Álvaro Uribe for the same. In his letter he said that Cepeda was looking for testimonies to “sink Uribe”, but the high court found many inconsistencies in his version and did not believe him. When the former president resigned from the Senate in August 2020 and his case went to the Prosecutor’s Office, Racumin gave a statement to this body on February 10, known by the informative alliance of The Spectator and Blu Radio. (Uribe case: this was the business of the farm of the witness Juan Monsalve)
Held in the Girón (Santander) prison, Barahona spoke under oath. He assured that he has received threats for speaking, did not give figures, dates or names, and several times they asked him to answer what was asked, because he was going around the bush. Likewise, it was ratified in what the letter that he submitted to the Court says. “I am aware, on the day or end of the month, November 2016, where Mr. Pablo Sierra, alias Alberto The Pipintá, and Mr. Iván Cepeda and Mr. Carlos Enrique Vélez, where they were arguing for Mr. Carlos Enrique Vélez to speak against Álvaro Uribe and his brother [Santiago] Uribe ”, reads that document.
And he continued: “So that they could agree to sink Mr. Uribe Vélez. And he only needed to agree on everything because Mr.Paul Pipintá I already had everything arranged with a very close character ”. This episode allegedly occurred in the “lawyers area” of the La Picota prison in Bogotá. It is not clear when and Barahona himself says that he does not know what happened next, but assures that, later, Pipintá and Vélez were arguing in his presence and that he had to intervene to separate them because the fumes were rising. “Pipintá he insisted that Carlos help him against Mr. Uribe, ”his letter continued. (Uribe case: has Diego Cadena visited Juan Guillermo Monsalve 44 times since 2011?)
The letter of Racumin He arrived at the Court through Juan José Salazar, as determined by the Investigation Chamber. It is about the partner of Diego Cadena, the lawyer who, on behalf of Álvaro Uribe, visited several ex-paramilitaries in prisons to ask them for favorable testimonies for the process against the former president and in return offered, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, money and perks. In his recent statement, Racumin He said he did not remember the last name, but he always referred to the lawyer he spoke with as Juan José. “He told me: don’t tell me that, do it by hand, I’ll pick it up. And tomorrow I come. Tell what you are going to say before the Supreme Court, write what you know and put it on paper. I said: ok ”, assured the expara.
Pablo Hernán Sierra, aliases Alberto Guerrero placeholder image The Pipintá, is one of the witnesses who have pointed out alleged links of former president Álvaro Uribe with the creation of the Metro block of the self-defense groups. The other witness who has made similar allegations is Juan Guillermo Monsalve, son of the administrator of the Guacharacas ranch, formerly owned by the Uribe Vélez family. As the Court was able to determine from the Inpec records, the lawyer Juan José Salazar entered the Cómbita prison to visit Racumin On February 21 and 22, 2018 and, the next day, on February 23, the defense of the former president filed in the high court a replacement against the order that ordered the investigation of Álvaro Uribe. Among the documents attached was the letter from Racumin.
In his statement to the Prosecutor’s Office, this man said that he knew Monsalve already Pipintá in jail and that he witnessed how both sought to gather former paramilitaries to testify against Álvaro Uribe. “But why?” The prosecutor rebuked him about those alleged actions of Pipintá. And he deviated from the topic, going on to refer, again, to the day of the meeting that he supposedly witnessed: “I was looking for members. That day what they asked Mr. Vélez was who were the members who were in that area, the oldest, what jails were they in and if they were alive or dead. That was all they said ”. (The evidence ordered by the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes in the Uribe case)
Supposedly aka Pipintá He offered money and benefits in prisons to anyone who testified against Álvaro Uribe. “Are we talking about how much money?” Asked the prosecutor. The expara replied that he did not know. This contrasts with what Carlos Enrique Vélez himself told the Prosecutor’s Office, whom, according to Racumin, Pablo Hernán Sierra tried to pressure. And it is that Vélez said that the lawyer Cadena not only gave him money for declaring in favor of the former president, but that he offered them to more people. “What Diego (Cadena) said is that each one would receive $ 200 million if one collaborated, the same I said to Diana, to Racumin already Phosphorite”Declared Vélez, as revealed by this alliance.
Alias Phosphorite He also sent statements to the Court in which he pointed to Senator Cepeda, but denies that they have offered him anything in return. When the prosecutor asked Racumin if he had been offered an offer to send that letter, he flatly denied it. At one point, the prosecutor even told him what Vélez had said days before about the alleged offer of $ 200 million. “No sir. I did not know that and until now I find out. That’s what surprises me, my family sent it to me, they tell me what trouble I’m getting into. I’m going to report it. I serve as a witness to him in something real and he goes on saying that I am part of that group and that he recruited me ”, he replied.
For the Court, the manifestations of Racumin They were “incoherent” and did not give them any weight, because when reviewing the Inpec records on this former paramilitary, they realized that, by the date he refers to, he was not in jail where he claims to have witnessed the meeting between Cépeda, Sierra and Velez. “It is clear, therefore, that alias Racumín is failing the truth, being warned as he is that in that supposed meeting with Vélez and Cepeda he could not be present, in addition that this fact referred to him as non-existent Carlos Enrique Vélez, which is verified by as long as he was not in La Picota on the appointed date, ”says the court’s arrest warrant against former President Álvaro Uribe.
For the Prosecutor’s Office, however, it was important to call him back to testify to find out what he knew Racumin on the relationship between Juan Monsalve and Iván Cepeda. “Are you aware that he (Monsalve) openly stated that he was benefited by Senator Cepeda?” The prosecutor asked him at one point. “Yes sir, I know,” he replied. “And in what way do you know that it benefited him?” “When it benefited him with the transfers.” De Monsalve, moreover, said that he was a “tall, big, stocky, rude, jerk boy”; that he witnessed a meeting between him and former senator Piedad Córdoba and that he constantly fought with a fellow patio for his statements against Uribe.
*This special report on the Uribe case was prepared by the judicial section of The viewer, made up of Diana Durán (judicial editor) and the reporters Felipe Morales, David Escobar, Alejandra Bonilla, Kelly Rodríguez and Sebastian Cote; and Santiago Martínez, journalist from the Investigative Unit. From Blue Radio there are the journalist Silvia Charry and Ricardo Ospina (director of Informative Services).
