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Six years ago, on May 6, 2014, the name of Colonel Jorge Hilario Estupiñán Carvajal took on national relevance due to the information released by journalist Vicky Dávila on the morning newscast La FM de RCN.
Before public opinion and before the Police Estupiñán Carvajal, who was the commander in the department of Casanare, was left as corrupt. His voice appeared in some audios – poorly recorded that were poorly understood – that became the support to accuse him on the air of diverting the hiring of the police in the department in favor of third parties. It was a contract for $ 46 million that had been signed the previous year, in 2013, and whose purpose was the acquisition of cots, pillows and mattresses as an endowment for some police stations in the department.
His immediate boss, the general director of the police, General Rodolfo Palomino, reacted and without questioning believed in the information transmitted in the large audience space directed by the renowned journalist. General Palomino’s concern was great because the investigation was already under way, led by the same journalist that ended up in the Fellowship of the Ring scandal. In the same month of May, the FM released the shocking audio of the officer Ányelo Palacio with which the officer denounced a prostitution network inside the police cadet school, of which General Palomino was said to have knowledge. The situation for the general director of the police was not easy.
A week after the first complaint against Estupiñán that May 6, which was also accompanied by an interview, on May 14, Vicky Dávila interviewed the General Inspector of the Police Yesid Vásquez who promised to initiate a thorough investigation into the case. The pressure inside the institution increased. That same night, without any investigation results and without controversial information, the then general director of the general police, Rodolfo Palomino, handed over the colonel’s head. He called him to warn him that he would be removing him from office.
Palomino sought to appease the storm that was beginning to form. The way out was to order Estupiñán to request a vacation immediately. A long four-month stint that had accumulated from many years of service. When he returned in September, Palomino, already in the public pillory and cornered by the scandal of the Fellowship of the Ring, announced his discharge. José Hilario Estupiñán, without any defense or benefit of the doubt, had ceased to be a colonel and his police career had been cut short.
Colonel Estupiñan knew that the accusation was unfair, but he had no margin to defend himself in the institution, or in front of the radio program, and therefore he decided to go to court. He was willing to fight to show his honor. At the end of 2017 he was criminally acquitted.
The judicial result was in response to a complaint filed within the police by Chief Intendant Luis Ernesto Pulecio Díaz, who was in charge of hiring the police at Casanare and who was removed from this position by Colonel Estupiñán, precisely because of signs of corruption. The same complaint, with audios included, that La FM learned about and that gave rise to the journalistic information that generated the media scandal that ended with the colonel’s dismissal. Mayor Pulecio Diaz was removed from the institution due to a decrease in his psychophysical capacity.
Estupiñán was not satisfied with his innocence in the criminal instance, and based on this he decided to file a civil action against journalist Vicky Dávila and RCN, the Ardila Lule radio station, owner of La FM. He also wanted financial compensation for the damage caused to him as a person, as a policeman and also to his family.
This October 20 the ruling of the Superior Court of Bogotá – Civil Chamber – was known, which agreed with the colonel and jointly condemned the director of the program and RCN to recognize $ 165 million to him and his family in the following way, payment to be done in the following ten days:
The three magistrates of the civil court of the Court who sign the ruling also order RCN and the journalist Vicky Dávila “to rectify the information transmitted on May 6 and 14 about the plaintiff José Hilario Estupiñán, emphasizing the inaccuracy that such calendar was transmitted , in addition to the pressure incurred by the Journalist when requesting the withdrawal of the plaintiff Colonel and they are ordered to disseminate the content of this decision. The FM is currently directed by the journalist Luis Carlos Vélez, who will have to obey the court ruling.
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