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In a second instance ruling, the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice overturned the sentence against the governor of Cesar, Luis Alberto Monsalve Gnneco.
Thus, the high court revoked the sentence that had been delivered by the Special Trial Chamber in the first instance in which he had been sentenced to 5 years of house arrest.
(Read in context: Five years in prison for the governor of Cesar for electoral corruption)
Monsalve Gnecco he had been convicted in July of this year because, according to that first ruling, he was responsible for the crime of corruption to the suffragette.
That ruling had ordered President Iván Duque to suspend Monsalvo from his position to pay the penalty imposed. For this reason, in a decision on July 27, Duque suspended him from the governorship and appointed Wilson Andrés Solano García in charge.
With the acquittal in favor of Monsalvo Gnecco, he will be able to return to his post.
According to the first instance decision, these crimes had occurred between August and October 2011, during the electoral campaign to elect the governor of the department for the period 2012-2015.
(Read also: Court referred incident of contempt to court due to protest ruling).
In the file it had been said that to achieve the election as governor, Monsalvo had signed a document in which he promised to prevent the eviction of an invasion neighborhood known as the Promised Land, in exchange for the families of that neighborhood – about 800 – to support him with their vote in the elections.
The first instance decision established that that promise constituted a gift that violated the voters’ freedom to vote.
However, in the decision on Wednesday, the Criminal Chamber decided to acquit Monsalvo, who always maintained that this promise to stop the eviction had been given as a legitimate action of his political campaign, and in compliance with a guardianship ruling that ordered freeze the expulsion of the families that were in that neighborhood.
Against the decision of the Criminal Chamber, two magistrates saved their vote and deviated from the majority ruling.
JUSTICE
