Category World News

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has been named in two separate criminal investigations led by prosecutors in the United States.

The New York Times was the first to report the existence of the two probes on Friday, citing sources familiar with the proceedings.

Media reports indicate that Petro is not personally the target of the investigations, which focus on drug-smuggling in Latin America.

But according to the Times, US attorneys in Brooklyn and Manhattan are looking into whether Petro met with drug traffickers and solicited donations from them for his 2022 presidential campaign. Al Jazeera has not independently verified the Times report.

By Friday afternoon, Petro had issued a statement denying the claims, which threaten to reopen the rift between the US and Colombia.

“In Colombia, there is not a single investigation into my relationship with drug traffickers, for one simple reason: I have never in my life spoken with a drug trafficker,” Petro wrote on the social media platform X.

He added that he told campaign managers to never accept donations from bankers or drug traffickers.

The investigations in the US, he argued, would ultimately exonerate him, and he blamed Colombia’s right-wing opposition for stirring controversy.

“So, the proceedings in the US will help me to dismantle the accusations of the Colombian far right, which is indeed closely linked to Colombian drug traffickers,” Petro said.

Petro has not been charged with any crimes, and the investigations are in their initial stages, according to the Times.

But experts say the timing of the report is significant, as it comes barely two and a half months before Colombia is set to hold a closely watched presidential election on May 31.

“If this would have happened a week before the first round, it would be election interference,” Sergio Guzman, director at Colombia Risk Analysis, a security think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“This seems to be more of a warning that shows how the US could influence the outcome of the election.”

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, is limited to a single term in office, but the election is likely to be a referendum on his four years in office.

It will also be a test for Petro’s Historic Pact coalition, whose candidate, Ivan Cepeda, is currently leading in the polls.

But United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to boost the prospects of right-wing candidates in Latin America. He and Petro have been at loggerheads since Trump returned to office in January 2025.

Their feud came to a head in January after the US attacked Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolas Maduro.

Shortly afterwards, a reporter asked if the US would take military action against Colombia. Trump replied: “It sounds good to me.”

To cool tensions, Trump and Petro held a call afterwards and agreed to meet.

Petro then visited the White House in early February to mend his often-combative relationship with Trump. While there, the Colombian delegation interacted with their counterparts, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, a longtime critic of Petro’s government, was also in attendance. Guzman believes the senator’s presence was significant.

“We don’t have a lot of straightforward answers about what were the commitments during that meeting, but Bernie Moreno did say that he wanted Petro not to be as involved in elections,” Guzman told Al Jazeera.

“And guess what? Petro is fully involved in the elections.”

The meeting also addressed collaborative efforts to combat drug trafficking, an issue core to Trump’s foreign policy.

Both presidents walked away from the meeting in good spirits, with Petro sharing a photo signed by Trump that read, “Gustavo – a great honor. I love Colombia.”

But Petro and Trump have long been at odds over how to tamp down on narcotics smuggling.

Colombia, the region’s largest producer of cocaine, has been criticised by the Trump administration for what it sees as soft-on-crime policies, including negotiations with armed groups.

Petro, meanwhile, has denounced the US for its lethal tactics, calling them tantamount to murder.

The US, for instance, has bombed at least 46 alleged drug boats and vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. Some of the 159 people killed were Colombian citizens.

The US has also floated the idea of conducting military attacks in Latin America against suspected drug traffickers, and it recently began joint operations against gangs in Ecuador, Colombia’s neighbour.

Analysts say actions like these have Latin American leaders on edge.

Trump’s aggressive manoeuvres suggest that the US president is willing to jeopardise “the sovereignty and peace of every nation” in his campaign against illicit drugs, according to Rodrigo Pombo Cajiao, a constitutional law professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

Pombo Cajaio pointed to the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. Maduro was a longtime adversary of Trump, and he is currently being held in prison in New York on drug-related charges.

“Every political leader in the region has been put on notice” after that abduction, Pombo Cajiao said.

“As the world’s leading producer of cocaine, Colombia found itself at high risk of judicial prosecution” from the US, he added.

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The US is moving military assets to the Middle East that are key to providing support for ground troop operations. Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett says it’s the clearest sign yet of potential US boots on the ground in Iran to secure the Strait of Hormuz.

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For the first time in recent history, Costa Rica has extradited some of its citizens to the United States to face criminal drug-trafficking and conspiracy charges.

The individuals included in Friday’s extradition include a top government official, Celso Gamboa, 49, who previously served as a Supreme Court justice from 2016 to 2018 and a deputy attorney general from 2015 to 2016.

The administration of Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles hailed the extraditions as a major step in ensuring criminal justice.

“Costa Rica is sending a strong message: no one can use our nationality to evade justice,” Attorney General Carlo Diaz said in a video message.

Diaz acknowledged that “high-profile individuals” were included in the inaugural extradition. “This is a historic day,” he added.

Previously, the Constitution of Costa Rica banned the extradition of its citizens for prosecution abroad.

But that changed in 2025 with a constitutional amendment championed by the Chaves government. Costa Rica’s legislature passed the amendment with 44 votes in support, out of a total of 57 deputies.

Proponents have argued that the change was needed to combat growing crime in the country and that corruption in the judicial system made the pursuit of justice difficult.

But critics have argued that extradition is a hardline tactic that fails to address the root causes of crime, while subjecting citizens to foreign laws.

The amendment is tailored to extraditing only suspects accused of drug-trafficking and “terrorism”, specifically.

It also sets conditions on extraditions: Suspects cannot be sent abroad to face the death penalty or sentences of more than 50 years’ imprisonment, the maximum allowed under Costa Rican law.

The amendment is part of a broader, regional trend of aggressive tactics to combat organised crime in Latin America.

In April 2024, Ecuador likewise approved an amendment — in its case, through a voter referendum — to allow extraditions of citizens to countries like the US. In July 2025, the US confirmed it had received its first extradition from the country since the amendment took effect.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa praised the measure as offering officials “more tools to fight crime”.

Friday’s inaugural extradition from Costa Rica, meanwhile, involved Gamboa and his alleged co-conspirator Edwin Lopez Vega, a suspected drug trafficker known by the nickname “Pecho de Rata” or “Rat’s Chest”.

Both men were placed in handcuffs on a Texas-bound plane at the Juan Santamaria International Airport in the Costa Rican capital San Jose. Gamboa and Lopez Vega were arrested on the same day.

Chaves Robles has accused Gamboa of representing “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of corruption in the political system.

But Gamboa has said the accusations against him were made in “bad faith” and that he plans to testify against other government figures if his safety and that of his family are not ensured.

Before serving as a judge and prosecutor, Gamboa had high-level roles in several presidential administrations.

Under President Laura Chinchilla, he served as the director of intelligence and national security, and under President Luis Guillermo Solis, he was the minister of public security.

But in 2024, a provisional warrant was issued for his arrest in the eastern district of Texas, and on June 23, 2025, Gamboa was arrested.

In a federal indictment in July of that year, the US government announced it would be charging Gamboa with manufacturing and distributing cocaine destined for the US, as well as related conspiracy charges.

The US Department of Justice said Gamboa worked with Lopez Vega to assist international drug trafficking operations. Both men were sanctioned by the US Treasury the following month.

“Gamboa used his extensive network of contacts within the government to acquire information about ongoing counternarcotics investigations,” the Treasury alleged.

“He subsequently sold this information to the targets of those exact investigations.”

Gamboa and Lopez Vega face a minimum of 10 years in prison in the US if convicted.

Costa Rica has forged an increasingly close relationship with the US under President Donald Trump.

After Trump took office for a second term, Costa Rica became one of the first countries to accept US deportation flights carrying citizens of “third-party” countries, as part of Trump’s mass deportation push.

This week, it also expelled Cuban diplomats from its borders, as part of a Trump-led pressure campaign against the Caribbean island.