The corruption scandal at the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) claims a new head. President Gustavo Petro announced on Friday morning that he has accepted the resignation of Carlos Ramón González from the National Intelligence Directorate, a position he had appointed him to five months earlier. González’s departure, accused by the Prosecutor’s Office of trying to direct contracts of the Unit to corrupt contractors in a broader scheme, strikes at the heart of the Government since he has been one of Petro’s most trusted persons.
On Thursday, prosecutor Andrea Muñoz Arango directed the indictment against two former executives of the UNGRD who have informally accepted acts of corruption. There, she pointed to González for having ordered the direction of contracts and the diversion of public funds to benefit congress members from various political parties. At that time, González was the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency (Dapre), a top position in the Executive branch, as it manages not only the administrative apparatus of the presidency but also relations with congress members and magistrates. One fact revealed González’s importance: his office was adjacent to Petro’s. Hours after the hearing, González defended himself in a public statement. “My innocence is irrefutable. I have never ordered anyone to commit any crime,” it reads.
The intelligence director has been one of the closest politicians to the president for decades. They have known each other since they were in the defunct M-19 guerrilla, where they held command positions in the department of Santander. González has been a power in the shadows in the Green Party, which he led in a merger with Petro’s supporters grouped in the Progresistas movement in 2013. A decade later, Petro brought him into key positions in his Government, from which he exits this Friday, following the same path taken by Olmedo López and Sneyder Pinilla, the former UNGRD officials who have been charged by the Prosecutor’s Office with five crimes and who are seeking to negotiate with that entity to provide information in exchange for reduced penalties.
The focus on the Minister of Finance
González’s departure puts the spotlight on another of Petro’s trusted officials who has been mentioned by López and Pinilla, and whom the Prosecutor’s Office pointed to in the hearing on Thursday: Ricardo Bonilla, his Minister of Finance. Olmedo López has stated that the minister obtained additional resources for the UNGRD in the General Budget of 2023, and that those funds were used to manipulate contracts and, with the overcharges, not only enrich officials and contractors but also pay bribes to congress members to approve the reforms of the Petro Government.
Bonilla’s name gained more prominence after the Prosecutor’s Office mentioned him as part of the criminal scheme during the indictment hearing on Thursday. The information backing the prosecuting entity indicates that the bribery scheme went far beyond the initial report regarding the millionaire overcharges in the purchase of water tankers to carry water to La Guajira. According to prosecutor Muñoz, the officials directed the awarding of at least 21 public contracts, worth over 228.844 billion pesos ($56.575 million).
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Bonilla has insisted that he has committed no wrongdoing and that the conclave where corruption acts supposedly were concocted was actually an official meeting scheduled by the government to advance on climate emergency issues. “They are turning government acts into illegal acts,” he said in an interview broadcast by Noticias Caracol on Thursday night.
When journalists Juan Roberto Vargas and Ricardo Calderón asked him if he planned to resign, Bonilla categorically denied that possibility: “Have you realized that what has happened here is a spectacle? Do you think I should get involved in the spectacle? When the best evidence is that we have a stable dollar, that international relations with multilateral banks are functioning adequately, that we have an economy that is in the process of recovering growth.”
Bonilla has maintained the same version as the other high-ranking officials implicated. All have stated that both López and Pinilla have constructed a false narrative to discredit the Government, divert the investigation, achieve the reduced penalties they are negotiating with the Prosecutor’s Office, and return only a part of the money they allegedly stole. This is reiterated by the Minister of Finance in the interview: “They seek to be immune and have others pay their penalties. How much did they receive in bribes? What is already known is that they received 5 billion.”
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