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The contract with the Santos government that the current magistrate César Augusto Reyes had – until a week ago investigating the case against Álvaro Uribe in the Supreme Court – continues to generate controversy.
Members of the Democratic Center assured last week that the contract, for 574 million pesos, within the framework of the peace process with the FARC, was a clear impediment. And now they are coming up with a new argument.
According to documents revealed by EL TIEMPO, The supervisor of the contract, Elsa Margarita Galera Gélvez, ended up being an employee of the office of Magistrate Reyes and roles were assigned to her in the investigation against the former president, which is today in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office (see document below).
(We invite you to read: Uribe talks about the magistrate’s contract who investigated him)
This is the appointment of the supervisor in the office of Magistrate Reyes.
“It is a new fact that merits another legal action against Magistrate Reyes, who from the beginning had to declare himself impeded in the case against the former president,” says Ernesto Macías, senator from the Democratic Center.
(You may be interested: This is how the Santos government hired at the signature of today’s magistrate Reyes)
And he added that at the meeting of the bench, scheduled for this Wednesday, they will ask that these complaints be supported.
This is the account that the supervisor is the same one who ended up employed in Reyes’ office.
Ernesto Macías, senator of the Democratic Center, who assures that César Reyes should have declared himself disabled in the case of Álvaro Uribe.
The new complaint from the Democratic Center is based on documents revealed by EL TIEMPO about the mechanisms used to award the contract.
The firm of which Reyes was a partner and legal representative, Nueva Justicia y Litigation Oral Consultores Ltda., Was hired by the Fund for Special Programs for Peace, to carry out a field investigation in order to establish the legal situation and status of health of the people with security measures or convicted that appeared in the lists of prisoners of the Farc-EP, in the framework of conversations that took place in Havana.
According to documents in the possession of EL TIEMPO, Reyes transferred the quotas he had in that company on October 5, 2018, three days before taking office as a magistrate of the Investigation Chamber.
(Also read: Why didn’t Magistrate Reyes answer 18 questions to Uribismo?)
The same did his partner, Fernando Jiménez Montes, who is now an assistant magistrate in his office.
However, in the opinion of members of the Uribista bench, the robed must have declared himself disabled.
For Uribe, this would constitute an impediment, since former President Santos is an alleged public enemy of Uribe, which members of the opposition reject, recalling that the current Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, also had contracts with the Uribe government.
In addition to another act of corruption, it is one more reason to have declared himself prevented. This merits another legal action against Judge Reyes.
Magistrate Reyes employed a supervisor for his contract with the Presidency https://t.co/k6Nj0prwsh via @time
– Ernesto Macías Tovar 🇨🇴 (@ernestomaciast) September 8, 2020
However, both Barbosa and the prosecutor assigned to lead the case, Gabriel Ramón Jaimes Durán (head of the delegates to the Supreme Court), have already officially and publicly notified that they will not declare themselves impeded in this file. In fact, the Deputy Attorney General, Marha Janeth Mancera, spoke in the same direction.
In this regard, Senator Iván Cepeda, victim in the case against Uribe, denounced a smear campaign against the Court. (Read: Cepeda says that Uribe hired an agency to discredit the Court)
According to the documents that EL TIEMPO reveals, the staff of the Peace Commissioner’s office was overwhelmed and required to go to the jails to verify the situation of each one of the members of the Farc that were going to be part of the peace process.
The idea, according to documents in the Casa de Nariño, was “to verify the will for peace and reintegration into civil life of the rebels.”
(It may be of your interest: Rubbing between Iván Cepeda and Uribistas who ask him to reveal their calls)
And for this, three quotes were requested from three firms. Although it is not explained why the selected ones were invited, it does appear that, in addition to Reyes, Lequity SAS and Arrieta Mantilla y Asociados, signature of former attorney Carlos Gustavo Arrieta, were invited.
(See here all the investigations of the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO)
The hiring instructions were given from Havana.
Until now, Magistrate Reyes has not ruled on the matter.
However, EL TIEMPO established that the magistrate assigned roles to the professional in the investigation against Álvaro Uribe, which ended up in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office after his resignation from the Senate.
With this office, roles within the file against Uribe were assigned to the auxiliary magistrate Elsa Galera.
Indeed, in an official letter of November 2019, an inspection procedure was assigned against Juan Guillermo Villegas Uribe, a farmer who appears in the interceptions that read in the file.
And in the imputation of charges, with an assurance measure against Uribe, Villegas is explicitly mentioned as one of the people who tried to reach Juan Guillermo Monsalve, one of the witnesses against Uribe, son of the butler of the Guacharacas farm, of the Uribe Vélez.
“Deyanira Gómez (Monsalve’s wife) asserted that her husband was also approached through his mother by Juan Guillermo Villegas and Diego Cadena, who traveled to Medellín to tell his family to trust the lawyer Cadena.
According to the witness, they were pressuring him to retract the claims against the former president.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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On twitter: @UinvestigativaET
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