A court in Bogotá formalized on Sunday the arrest of Nicolás Petro Burgos, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and his ex-wife Daysuris Vásquez, arrested for the possible crime of money laundering, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. The judge decreed as legal the capture procedures carried out on Saturday in their places of residence in Barranquilla, capital of the Atlántico department, from where they were transferred by plane to Bogotá, reports Efe.
In the judicial decision, the “search, search and seizure for the purpose of confiscation of elements that would be useful for the investigation and that acquire the quality of probative material or physical evidence” were also decreed legal, the Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
In a hearing that lasted eight hours, Municipal Criminal Court 74, with functions of control of guarantees, reaffirmed that “all constitutional and legal requirements were met in the procedure” of detention. In the next few hours, possibly this Tuesday, the Prosecutor’s Office will charge Nicolás Petro with money laundering and illicit enrichment charges, and his ex-wife with money laundering and personal data violation, the information added.
Nicolás Petro, who is a deputy of the Atlantic Assembly, was arrested in Barranquilla as part of an investigation launched by the Prosecutor’s Office in March. The starting point was an interview with his ex-wife to Semana magazine in which she recounted that Nicolás Petro received a large sum of money from a drug trafficker for the electoral campaign of today’s president Gustavo Petro and that he kept that money. According to the account of Vásquez, also arrested, drug trafficker Samuel Santander Lopesierra, alias the Marlboro man, gave her “more than 600 million pesos (about $153,000) for dad’s campaign.”
Nicolás Petro would also have received 200 million pesos (about $51,000) from the controversial businessman Alfonso Turco Hilsaca, who did not go to the campaign either. The President of the Republic assured on Saturday that he will not intervene or pressure the decisions of the Prosecutor’s Office to benefit his son.
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