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He is one of the seven recently elected members of the National Commission for Judicial Discipline. In other words, it will be in charge of sanctioning judges, prosecutors and lawyers throughout the country.
This Wednesday, December 2, Congress finally made a long-awaited election: that of the seven members of the National Commission for Judicial Discipline. In 2015, via constitutional reform, the questioned Disciplinary Chamber of the Superior Council of the Judiciary ceased to exist, to make way for this new body. However, bureaucratic entanglements – put simply – delayed change for almost five years. Now, there are six new names who will be in charge of investigating and sanctioning the country’s lawyers, prosecutors and judges. There should be seven new names, but Magda Victoria Acosta, nominated by President Duque, was already doing the same precisely from the Disciplinary Chamber of the Judiciary.
This being the case, this Commission was born with two controversies in tow. The first is about Acosta, because the country’s magistrates, jurisprudence has said, cannot go to revolving doors to jump from court to court. Francisco Ricaurte – currently on trial for his alleged participation in the toga cartel – and Pedro Munar left the Judiciary in this way, although their situation differed from that of Acosta in something essential: they were his own colleagues from Sala Plena who elected them to those positions when, in turn, Ricaurte and Munar had voted for them to reach the Supreme Court. In other words, “I choose me, you choose me.” It is not the same with Acosta, in the middle of everything. (Also read: Congress elected the members of the Judicial Discipline Commission)
The second controversy, the most delicate, involves the former Bogotà comptroller Juan Carlos Granados, who was also termed by the head of state. In 2018, the Prosecutor’s Office indicted him for nothing more and nothing less than the Odebrecht corruption scandal, based on the testimony of Federico Gaviria, a businessman who had already been convicted of the hiring carousel and who, with Odebrecht, He ended up accepting to have been part of the bribery gear of the Brazilian multinational with which he obtained millionaire contracts in 12 countries, including Colombia. The matter does not end there: the most serious thing is that Granados, who will now have the task of sanctioning judges and prosecutors across the country, will be called to trial.
This newspaper established that, on December 7, there will be a hearing for the Prosecutor’s Office to read the indictment against him, which El Espectador knew in its entirety. “According to the probative elements, physical evidence and information legally obtained, it can be affirmed with probability of truth that from the year 2011 Juan Carlos Granados as candidate for the Governor of Boyacá and during the period in which he served as the first president of the department , from 2012 to 2015, agreements were reached with other people, including the executives of the Odebrecht firm […] to commit various crimes, “says the indictment. (It may interest you: The entanglements of the election of the new comptroller of Bogotá)
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, that agreement was with Luiz Antonio Bueno, Eder Ferracuti and Eleuberto Martorelli, in addition to Plinio Olano (who already went to trial and was acquitted) and Federico Gaviria himself. The document says that the purpose of those meetings was “that several state contracts in which Governor Granados Becerra had interference were awarded or directed illegally in favor of the Odebrecht firm.” The Prosecutor’s Office assures that in a specific meeting at the home of former senator Plinio Olano in Sopó (Cundinamarca) the Duitama – Charalá – San Gil road project was discussed and that the conclusion of the meeting was that Odebrecht would support Granados’ campaign for the Interior with $ 200 million .
“As a fulfillment of the illicit commitments acquired in the campaign,” the indictment reads, Granados would have appointed a subordinate of his, Bernardo Umbarila, to interact with Odebrecht, which ultimately withdrew from the initiative because it found it not financially viable. For the Prosecutor’s Office, however, the crime was consummated and, therefore, it accuses Granados of three crimes: conspiracy to commit a crime, undue interest in the conclusion of contracts and influence peddling in public servants. He, for his part, assures that he is innocent and therefore, instead of accepting charges, he decided to face the Prosecutor’s Office in court. The Supreme Court will have the last word in this case. (Related article: These are the trustees of the National Judicial Discipline Commission)
