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This Wednesday, the full Congress elected the seven magistrates who must make up the National Commission for Judicial Discipline, which disciplinary judges, lawyers and prosecutors in the country.
This commission should have started operating in 2016 but due to judicial decisions it had not been able to conform, which led to the interim Disciplinary Chamber of the Superior Council of the Judiciary –eliminated in 2015 with the balance of power reform – would continue to function.
The period of these new magistrates will begin on January 11, 2021, although their possession would be this year.
(You may be interested in: Controversial member of the Disciplinary Chamber would be elected by Congress)
The profiles of the 7 elected magistrates are varied, some are particularly striking because they have been questioned before.
For example, of the 3 shortlists that President Iván Duque sent to Congress, two famous names were chosen: Magda Victoria Acosta Walteros, who is the current provisional magistrate of the already questioned Disciplinary Chamber of the Judiciary.
Acosta’s election means, in practice, a reelection that is prohibited in the high courts. She arrived in April 2016 at the Disciplinary Chamber and now, as a magistrate elected to the body that must replace that chamber, Acosta will have 12 years as a magistrate: 4 since 2016 in the interim chamber, and 8 more that she has as a magistrate of the National Commission of Judicial Discipline.
(Read also: Of these 21 names will come robes of the Judicial Discipline Commission)
The former comptroller of Bogotá was also chosen from Duque’s list Juan Carlos Granados Becerra, who was charged by the Prosecutor’s Office in November 2018 for the Odebrecht case. His case is in the Special Chamber of First Instance of the Supreme Court of Justice, where he will be accused on December 7, in a hearing to formulate the accusation.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the former comptroller would have made movements to benefit the multinational when he was a candidate and later governor of Boyacá between 2012 and 2015.
According to the prosecuting body, Granados received money as an applicant and, already in office, tried to award the Duitama – Charalá San Gil road work. The former official has insisted on his innocence.
The last chosen one of the presidential lists Mauricio Fernando Rodríguez, who is currently a joint judge of the second and third sections of the Council of State, is also a partner of the firm Rodríguez Castaño Abogados. He was an external advisor to Inpec and head of the legal office of Interaseo SAESP
(We recommend: Could the decision of the Court overturn the decisions of the Disciplinary Chamber?)
For its part, of the four shortlists that the Superior Council of the Judiciary – formerly called the Disciplinary Chamber – were elected by Congress Diana Marina Vélez, current second attorney before the Council of State and who has been in public service for 31 years, was also a delegate person in the district of Bogotá.
It was also selected Alfonso Cajiao Cabrera, former Deputy Attorney General for the Military Forces, as well as former secretary general of the Ombudsman’s Office, and responsible ombudsman, after the resignation of Jorge Armando Otálora.
The third chosen was Carlos Arturo Ramírez Vásquez, who is currently a magistrate and president of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Sectional Council of the Judiciary of Bogotá, career criminal judicial attorney, with more than 25 years of professional experience in constitutional, public, administrative, criminal and disciplinary law.
Finally Congress voted Julio Andrés Sampedro Arrubla, professor of Law at the Javeriana University and former Dean of Legal Sciences of that university, he has also been director of the Doctorate in Legal Sciences of the Javeriana, joint judge of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, among other positions.
With these 7 names, the National Disciplinary Commission must be formed and installed before December 20, by order of the Constitutional Court.
(In context: Court asks to investigate magistrates of scandal in the Judiciary)
Why has the Disciplinary Chamber of the Judiciary been so controversial?
It was eliminated 5 years ago but continued to function on an interim basis, with Julia Emma Garzón and Pedro Sanabria, two magistrates who remained in their positions and stayed for 12 years, despite the fact that the terms are 8, and with another 5 chosen by those two in a private room, instead of the election by Congress mandated by law.
The Chamber, in addition to disciplining judges, lawyers and prosecutors in the country, is the one that resolves conflicts of jurisdiction between jurisdictions, for example, it defines whether a case should go to the military criminal justice or be in the ordinary one.
However, its interim status cast doubts on its legitimacy, in fact, in a ruling a few weeks ago the same Supreme Court He questioned the validity of the decisions that Sanabria and Garzón have made for 4 years.
Recently there have also been complaints of sexual harassment within the Disciplinary Chamber, involving two of its magistrates under their own names.
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