Colombian President Gustavo Petro has criticized a Guatemalan court order requiring the arrest of two senior Colombian officials, blaming the prosecutor’s office for being corrupt.
During the United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an investigation into bribes paid to Guatemalan officials by Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, on Monday, Guatemalan Public Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche charged Colombian Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo and former Colombian Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez of corruption, influence peddling, obstruction of justice, and collusion.
Petro claimed on Tuesday that Camargo and Velasquez’s arrest was motivated by politics and demonstrates how subservient the attorney general’s office is to the mafia.
In a post on X, Petro wrote that “national corporations that deal with drug trafficking are attempting to overtake legal and government hands and whitewash their illicit business.”
Guatemala’s government added that it “emphatically rejects the arrest warrants” in a statement released on Monday.
The statement read, “These actions are carried out without any ground in the national and international legal system,” adding that “they are clearly political objectives.
Curruchiche claimed without providing any proof that Camargo and Velasquez abused their position while working for the CICIG in the notorious corruption case Odebrecht, in which the construction company admitted to paying officials for public contracts in 10 Latin American nations, when they announcing the warrants on Monday.
Although Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the emails, Curruchiche claimed Camargo and Velasquez were to blame for the allegedly false emails between Odebrecht employees and Camargo on Tuesday.
Velasquez, who is currently Colombia’s ambassador to the Holy See, was appointed as the minister of defense in January 2023, when Curruchiche’s office first announced its investigation. Velasquez oversaw the CICIG from 2013 to 2019, which found numerous corruption-related organizations in Guatemala.
The prosecutor’s office in Guatemala did not respond to a request for comment.
The accusations have been refuted by both Camargo and Velasquez.
In an X-post on Tuesday, Velasquez wrote that the corrupt Guatemalan Attorney General and Curruchiche, who have been detained by the US and the European Union, “expand their persecution of me and Luz Adriana Camargo.”
In a press conference held on Wednesday in Bogota, Colombia’s attorney general also rejected the allegations.
Camargo said, “I find comfort in knowing that I am innocent in the crimes that have been my responsibility because of political bias.”
“Action as a weapon”
The accusations against Colombian officials were untrue, according to Juanita Goebertus Estrada, director of Human Rights Watch’ Americas Division.
Velasquez and Camargo have no proven links to any organized crime, she said, adding that the warrants were only the most recent in a line of contentious actions taken by Guatemala’s Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras, who has been criticized internationally for repressing anti-corruption efforts.
Consuelo Porras’ record on democracy and human rights is terrible. She has consistently used criminal behavior as a tool in opposition to those who have tried to combat corruption in the nation, according to Goebertus.
Prior to the 2023 presidential run-off, Curruchiche’s office suspended then-candidate Bernardo Arevalo’s party, which he had been accused of interfering with elections. In January 2024, Arevalo assumed office and won the election.
The arrest warrants are a part of a wider pattern of judicial overreach, according to Guatemala’s government.
The Guatemalan government said in a statement on Monday that the “public prosecutor’s office, the Attorney General of the Republic, and judges associated with corruption are all involved in a series of actions that have distorted the meaning of justice in Guatemala.
Despite the arrest warrants, it seems unlikely that the two officials’ actions will be ported outside of Guatemala.
Petro won’t follow the arrest warrants, according to Sergio Guzman, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a security think tank, and it’s very likely that he will file an injunction against Interpol for any international notices that ask for them.
However, the Petro administration’s arrest warrants have been viewed as evidence of corruption by Colombian opposition figures. The conservative candidate for president in the upcoming year’s election, Victory Davila, promised to follow the law.
