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These are the details of the statement that a lawyer for former President Álvaro Uribe, Jaime Lombana, delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office on February 4. The criminal prosecutor put on record his annoyances or differences towards other defenders of the ex-president, such as Diego Cadena, Abelardo de la Espriella or Jaime Granados, and denied that he had been in the Picota on February 22, 2018 to pressure the witness Juan Guillermo Monsalve in favor of Uribe.
On February 4, while the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes continued in the task of obtaining the statements he believed necessary to put together his own thesis on the case against former president Álvaro Uribe, it was the turn of one of the former president’s lawyers to testify. : Jaime Lombana. The Spectator and Blu Radio reveal the version that the criminal prosecutor delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office, in a virtual diligence that lasted one hour and 28 minutes, about a day that is essential for the process against the natural head of the Democratic Center: the meeting in jail on February 22 of 2018 between Diego Cadena and Juan Guillermo Monsalve.
Lombana told the Prosecutor’s Office what he has already maintained before: that he had nothing to do with the meeting between Monsalve -who has testified against Uribe, arguing that it had to do with the creation of the Metro block- and Cadena, at the Monsalve’s lawyer at the time, Héctor Romero, also joined. Romero himself, whose testimony revealed this informational alliance, told the Prosecutor’s Office that he was sitting in La Picota with Monsalve and Cadena, with no one else. Lombana assured the same: that he was at another table and with Enrique Pardo Hasche, whom he went to see at the request of his partner, Natalia Londoño Williamson.
This, said Lombana, told him that a political uncle of hers was detained in prison and that he was “in a very sad situation” as a result of “a back problem, a hernia.” Then, according to Lombana, he asked to visit him whenever possible “to see what he could recommend.” That inmate turned out to be Enrique Pardo Hasche, a member of Bogota’s elite and husband of an aunt of the Lombana couple. Pardo Hasche is held in La Picota, where he is serving a 29-year prison sentence for the kidnapping and murder of industrialist Eduardo Puyana, father-in-law of former President Andrés Pastrana.
“I swear before the courts and before God that the only day I have spoken with the man was that February 22, 2018,” said Jaime Lombana, who said he did not know who Pardo Hasche’s cellmates were. One of them was Juan Guillermo Monsalve and the version that Pardo Hasche had rotated, as stated by other people before the Prosecutor’s Office such as Victoria Jaramillo, is that Monsalve cried at night because of how sorry he was for his accusations against former President Uribe. Monsalve, for his part, told the Supreme Court that those tears of regret have never flowed down his face.
Uribe’s lawyer, however, insisted that he arrived at La Picota on February 22, 2018, summoned by María Mercedes Williamson (“my mother-in-law”) for a completely different reason than Juan Guillermo Monsalve: Enrique Pardo Hasche’s hernia. “I realize within minutes, prosecutor, that he had no interest in the issue of the back. I perceive, because he puts the subject for me, he says to me: ‘Do you know what’s going on at that table?’, Something like that, and I answer him: ‘Look, Mr. Pardo, don’t talk to me about anything other than what I came to speak. If you tell me about something else, I’ll stop and go. At that moment I felt like I was used ”.
“I want to make it very clear that I only, as they can register it and that is how Inpec has certified it, I only entered that day, never again: neither before nor after, to La Picota prison,” added Lombana, who assured: “I I came out with a bad taste because I realized what Mr. Pardo’s interest was, what was happening at the other table and not what he wanted to tell me ”. The litigant said that Magistrate César Reyes, instructor of the Uribe case in the Supreme Court, asked him at the time “why he is so suspicious”, and that he replied: “I am already 57 years old, I have an experience and I realized that the man (Pardo) had an interest ”.
“I have the conviction that this was a trap, I have the conviction that this was a prepared meeting,” said Jaime Lombana. “Today I say: that was no coincidence, I did not know that I was going to see that Mr. Monsalve, I did not know that the lawyer Cadena was going to go that day, I say it before God, for the health of my parents, my Son, of my own health, I did not know that a Mr. Monsalve was in that courtyard, I did not know that Dr. Diego Cadena was going to go that day … I did not know, I return and I swear by my son that, it is the love of my life, my only son ”, reiterated Lombana.
Diego Cadena, as is public knowledge, is a former Uribe lawyer who is on trial for bribery in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud. The thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office – from a different office than the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes – is that Cadena went that February 22, 2018 to La Picota, and returned at least once more, in order to make offers to Juan Guillermo Monsalve so that he will retract his accusations against Uribe, which the former president describes as liars. (“I refrain from answering”: this is how Diego Cadena declared in the Prosecutor’s Office for the Uribe case). Cadena, for his part, maintains that he did not commit any crime and that he never offered Monsalve anything.
“Now, I did not say goodbye to Cadena, Mr. Monsalve told the Court that I had approached the table and told Mr. Diego Cadena ‘I’ll wait for you outside’, which is a lie, that also He already clarified before the Superior Council of the Judiciary in an interrogation that I carried out because that is a lie, as it is a lie, many of which he said in the statement, which leaves much to be desired by the investigating official, where he even He blows my name, because Mr. Monsalve did not know it, ”Lombana continued in his statement under oath before the Prosecutor’s Office.
At this point, Lombana again agrees with the statement that Héctor Romero gave to the Prosecutor’s Office on January 29. Romero said that on February 22, 2018, in La Picota, he saw “a lawyer who appears on television, who at this moment my name is going away. I remember him because he is the lawyer who was in the Superior Council of the Judiciary and who also called me for a statement investigated for these events. From what I managed to understand is that he had supposedly participated in the meeting in which I participated, which was not true. Only Cadena, Monsalve and I were there ”.
Lombana labeled Monsalve’s statements against him as direct lies: “That man said that I was Santiago Uribe’s lawyer, I have represented Santiago Uribe in my life, in my life I have interfered in the Santiago Uribe process, no I have the process, I have nothing to do with it ”. In fact, highlighted the lawyer, who has defended Santiago Uribe Vélez – brother of former President Uribe – is Jaime Granados, with whom he admitted he had “an enmity, to put it clearly” as a result of the Colmenares case, in which they clashed and even had each other arrested. (Uribe case: the versions of three former paramilitaries, their allegations and inconsistencies)
When the hypothesis that Lombana was in the Picota as part of a “trap” against the witness Juan Guillermo Monsalve began to be made public, the lawyer, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, called Uribe. “I tell him: President, I want to speak with that Mr. Cadena. And I do not understand why I appear mentioned in this roll if I did not know that the next day they had to present some evidence before the Supreme Court, as I know today, I had no idea that any term was expiring, I did not have the slightest idea of the details of any process other than what was published in the press ”.
What came later, according to Jaime Lombana, was that he called “Dr. Uribe’s assistant, Dr. Fabián Rojas,” who was actually a member of Uribe’s Legislative Labor Unit in the Senate and who ended up quite related to everything. this process, although the Prosecutor’s Office did not call him to testify. Rojas would have given Lombana Diego Cadena’s phone number so they could talk. He called him, summoned him to his office and said: “Did you read the press publications? He says: ‘of course’. I say: doctor, with all due respect, tell me one thing: are you a lawyer for President Uribe? Do you have a power? And that day I found out that it did have general power ”. (The evidence ordered by the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes in the Uribe case)
For Lombana, confirming that Diego Cadena had general power from former President Álvaro Uribe was like a slap in the face. “That had a great impact on me,” he told the 11th prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court and subordinate to Gabriel Jaimes, “first, to find out that he represented President Uribe. Second, among other things, and there is an anecdote, I did not even know that Abelardo De la Espriella was also President Uribe’s lawyer (…) I thought to myself: well, anyone is Uribe’s lawyer ”.
Uribe’s defender also revealed the outrage caused by learning through the media that the former president himself asked Cadena to review a letter that Lombana had prepared for him to answer a tutelage of journalist Daniel Coronell. “I know that this diligence will be known to President Uribe, [pero] Well, I come back and say: I consider my professional work an offensive act (…) I forgive Dr. Uribe in the middle of his despair for the fact, but he knows my annoyance and he knows my rejection ”. And he added: “Let a Miguel Córdoba, a Jaime Bernal an Iván Cancino review a memorial for me, suddenly (…) But for Dr. Diego Cadena to review some allegations for me: I couldn’t believe it.”
Jaime Lombana insisted to the Prosecutor’s Office that both that detail, as well as the mess that arose from his visit to La Picota at the same time as the meeting between Diego Cadena, Juan Guillermo Monsalve and Héctor Romero, were things that he found out later and through Of the media. The lawyer reiterated that he had nothing to do with the meeting between Cadena and Monsalve. “Mr [Monsalve] He said that I had previously gone to the patio [de la Picota] and you can verify the records, it is not true that I entered neither before nor after ”. In conclusion, for Lombana, Juan Guillermo Monsalve has only lied to justice.
*This special report on the Uribe case was prepared by the judicial section of El Espectador, made up of Diana Durán (judicial editor) and reporters Felipe Morales, David Escobar, Alejandra Bonilla, Kelly Rodríguez and Sebastián Cote; and Santiago Martínez, journalist from the Investigative Unit. On behalf of Blu Radio are the journalist Silvia Charry and Ricardo Ospina (director of Informative Services).
