[ad_1]
The Council of State of Colombia unchanged the decision made by three arbitrators of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce in which they defined, among other things, that the State will not assume Odebrecht’s debts with the banks that lent them money for the project of the construction of the Ruta del Sol 2.
According to information from El Espectador, the high court did not modify the judicial decision that seeks to protect the interests of the Nation and that left Odebrecht, CSS Constructores, of the Solarte group, and Episol, of Corficolombiana, without alternatives to pay the banks who financed the project.
With the presentation of the magistrate María Adriana Marín, the high court studied the more than seven appeals that were presented, not only from the project partners, but also the banking entities that were affected. This is how these organizations asked the Council of State to annul the decision, since they considered that it had been taken outside of what was legally permitted and that the court had ruled on issues that were not part of the process.
However, for the magistrates of the Council of State, the award was well done and there is nothing to change it. For the high court, the decision that was known in August 2019 is completely legal and the State only has to pay $ 211,273 million (the value of 52% of the works that were delivered and that the country must recognize), which means which is barely 5.52% of the $ 3.8 trillion sought by those who asked to overturn the award of the arbitrators of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce.
Recommended: Successes and mistakes of the arbitration award in Ruta del Sol 2 were analyzed in Cátedra Bancolombia
According to information from El Espectador, one of the pillars of the award that the Council of State left intact has to do with a reproach made by the arbitrators in the case: because the three lawyers insisted that neither Odebrecht, nor its partners, nor any other actor in the lawsuit, gave the court a credible report of the financial statements of their accounts that would allow them to determine, with certainty, how much of the money that came into their possession was used to pay bribes (which the Brazilians have already accepted to have paid in Colombia to keep the millionaire contract for the construction of the Ruta del Sol 2).
Thus, according to the arbitrators, the concessionaire failed to prove that the money invested by the banks was used for a public good.
According to information from El Espectador, in the defense Bancolombia had Daniel Posse; Davivienda, to Juan Carlos Esguerra; Itaú, Eduardo Zuleta; Corficolombiana, Andrés Flórez Villegas; the concessionaire, Ángel Castañeda; Odebrecht, Humberto Meza and Liliana Sarmiento; Episol, Patricia Mier, and Grupo Aval, José Roberto Sáchica, who faced the arbitrators Catalina Hoyos Jiménez, Jorge Enrique Ibáñez Najar and Carlos Mauricio González, the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá and the Attorney General’s Office.
For the Council of State, this legal dispute has no other way than to annul the arbitration decision. Although this determination is essential for the future of the award, those who have sought to overturn it can still file a tutela for the Constitutional Court to review the case.
[ad_2]
