"Here we all steal…": the revelations of Gustavo Petro's son and the audios of his daughter-in-law that cause a political earthquake in Colombia

Gustavo Petro's first scandal as president of Colombia —this Monday marks his first year in office— has come close to him: from his own family. Last March, the Colombian Prosecutor's Office announced the opening of an investigation into the accusations against Nicolás Petro of having received money from an illegal source.. Five months later, the president's eldest son has been arrested in Barranquilla, along with his ex-wife, for the alleged crimes of money laundering and illicit enrichment.

The accusations, confirmed this week by Nicolás to the Colombian Prosecutor's Office, are serious because money laundering in Colombia has a penalty of between 10 and 30 years in prison and illicit enrichment of 5 to 10 years. Nicolás Petro, who is also a deputy, has agreed to collaborate with the Justice and has begun to do so.

He has revealed to the Prosecutor's Office that part of the allegedly illegal money he received entered his father's 2022 electoral campaign. As explained by the prosecutor in the case, Mario Burgos, in a public hearing, the president's son “provided relevant information that the Prosecutor's Office was unaware of” about “facts that he knows and are of concern to the country.”

Money for the presidential campaign

“In reality, some of said money entered their coffers and others went to the 2022 presidential campaign in which our current president, Dr. Gustavo Petro Urrego, was elected,” the prosecutor said. This is what Day Vásquez, Nicolás's ex-wife, already said, that the 2022 presidential campaign received “dark money”, money from former drug traffickers.

Of said money, some entered their coffers and others to the 2022 presidential campaign in which Gustavo Petro was elected,” said the prosecutor.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the president's son acted to hide the assets he acquired thanks to the million-dollar sums of cash he received from different people in the Colombian cities of Bogotá and Barranquilla.

According to the prosecutor's account, Petro Jr. bought lots, apartments, houses and high-end cars that, according to communications with Day Vázquez, could not remain in his name, since it was not right for the son of the President of the Republic to make such movements. financiers, details the Colombian political and current affairs magazine Semana.

“Here he is stealing, I am stealing, the other is stealing and we are all stealing,” Vásquez told Máximo Noriega —a friend and until last week a candidate for the governorship of the Atlantic for the Colombia Humana movement, created by the president— in a call on January 23 when he asked her to return money to Nicolás Petro, from whom she was already separated.

Money linked to drug trafficking

The investigation would have evidence that Nicolás Petro received money from Samuel Santander Lopesierra, alias “El hombre Malboro” and Alfonso Hilsaca, alias “El Turco Hilsaca”, both linked to drug trafficking and with criminal records. The first was convicted of drug trafficking in the United States and the second was investigated for alleged conspiracy to commit a crime and commit homicide.

Before the Prosecutor's Office, the president's son has admitted “that he did receive large sums of money from “The Marlboro Man”. Nicolás also told the Prosecutor's Office that he had received money from Gabriel Hilsaca Acosta, son of “Turco Hilsaca,” as well as from “Óscar Camacho, a powerful businessman from the city of Cúcuta.”

The money was transported in suitcases and kept in a safe. This patrimonial increase was, in the opinion of the Prosecutor's Office, an illicit enrichment. Apparently, the president's eldest son received at least 200 million pesos a year (about 45,000 euros). However, according to prosecutors, to support the millionaire assets that those 200 million pesos held, he would have had to receive them monthly.

Nicolás Petro dedicated himself to doing business, between quotes, business here and there in the name of his father, without his father knowing.”

Months ago, Nicolás's ex-wife said that Gustavo Petro was unaware of his son's movements of illicit money. However, now he would have told the Prosecutor's Office that part of the dirty money did end up in the electoral campaign of the now president.

Now, after Nicolás's testimony, prosecutor Burgos affirms that “a part of this money was used by Nicolás Petro Burgos himself and his wife (at that time) for their personal benefit… Another part of that money was invested in the presidential campaign of the year 2022”.

When she discovered the cake with her statements to Semana, Day Vásquez assured that her ex-husband wanted to make money taking advantage of her last name. “Nicolás Petro dedicated himself to doing business, between quotes, business here and there in the name of his father, without his father knowing,” he declared in March.

Who is Nicolas Petro?

Nicolás is Petro's eldest son and deputy of the Atlantic assembly. He was born on June 21, 1986 (today he is 37 years old) and his mother is Katia Burgos, the first wife of the now Colombian president.. He grew up far from his father, then an M19 guerrilla.. He studied Law at the Pontifical Bolivarian University and then a master's degree in Climate Change and a master's degree in Government and Public Management (the latter in Barcelona, at the Pompeu Fabra University).

Deputy for the Atlántico department, the Electoral Council has already investigated him for possible irregularities in his 2018 campaign

Back in Colombia, he chose, like his father, a political career.. He settled in Barranquilla and in 2018 he already ran for governor of Atlántico. He did not win, but he managed to occupy a seat in the Assembly of that department of Colombia where complaints of vote buying are frequent at electoral times. a “hard blow” that comes from the same family

That race already caused him a first scandal. The National Electoral Council investigated him for two years for possible irregularities in the Atlantic campaign. In December 2022, he was fined 14,900,000 pesos (less than 3,000 euros).

How will it affect the president?

“How much can the denunciations that deputy Nicolás Petro deliver to the Prosecutor's Office destabilize Gustavo Petro? It is curious that the 'soft coup' that the Government was talking about did not take place, but a 'hard coup' has developed that comes from the same presidential family,” political analyst Juan Carlos Flórez wrote on Twitter.

He is the first son of a president to go to jail.. because no other president allows justice to act independently as Gustavo Petro does”

Former senator Gustavo Bolívar, candidate for mayor of Bogotá and squire of the president, assures that “Nicolas Petro is the first son of a president to go to jail, but not because the sons of other presidents have not committed crimes, but because no other president allows justice to act independently and without pressure as Gustavo Petro does”.

But some have not waited for the facts to be proven and judged. “I will denounce Gustavo Petro before the Accusations Commission. Nicolás (Petro) has confirmed to the Prosecutor's Office that his father did know about the income of irregular money to the presidential campaign. I hope that for the first time, this commission will act on the evidence and not simply acquit,” said Senator Jonathan Pulido Hernández.

Former right-wing presidential candidate Federico Gutiérrez has said that “justice must go to the depth of this fact” and added that “it is inevitable to start a process that restores the confidence of Colombians in democracy.”

It is inevitable to start a process that restores the confidence of Colombians in democracy”

Former President Andrés Pastrana, always very critical of Petro, has assured that “criminal responsibility for the money received by Nicolás Petro falls on the beneficiary of the crime, the candidate and current president Gustavo Petro, who must immediately confront what he is calling into question the legitimacy of his mandate.

And now that? According to Yann Basset, director of the Democracy Studies Group, told El Nacional, “it will be decisive how the investigation will continue and whether the thesis held by Nicolás Petro's ex-wife is credible, according to which the president does not was aware of his son's actions, which obviously raises doubts to the extent that these events apparently had to do with campaign financing. It's like a sword of Damocles hanging over the president.”

“I receive with pain, on a personal level, the information about alleged irregularities in the development of the presidential campaign on the coast,” Gustavo Petro himself said in a statement this Friday. “Nothing can stop the fight of a lifetime against corruption, we will continue without distractions the task and commitment for a better Colombia. It will be the judges who legally define what corresponds.