A nanny, cash, polygraphs, wiretaps and leaks
The story of the most damaging scandal to hit the Petro administration
President Gustavo Petro’s administration has been hit by its most damaging scandal to date—a multifaceted affair with different plotlines, involving a nanny, polygraphs, lost cash, illegal wiretaps, betrayals, broken friendship, blackmail, political intrigues and leaked audio recordings. It has forced the resignation of Laura Sarabia, Petro’s powerful chief of staff, and Armando Benedetti, Petro’s ambassador to Venezuela and senior member of his 2022 campaign.
The opposition claims that this scandal is the biggest political scandal since the Proceso 8.000 in the 90s (the illegal financing of Ernesto Samper’s 1994 campaign by the Cali cartel). The government and its supporters see it as sordid plot by its enemies in high places, part of a ‘soft coup’ (golpe blando).
Dramatis personae: Laura Sarabia and Armando Benedetti
The two central characters in the scandal are Laura Sarabia and Armando Benedetti.
Laura Sarabia, just 29 years old, was Petro’s powerful chief of staff and self-described ‘shadow’ until June 2. Sarabia was an unknown young political staffer until last year, and quickly amassed power and influence by virtue of her close connection to the president.
Prior to working with Petro, Sarabia worked in then-senator Armando Benedetti’s office as a communications adviser and his private secretary. During the 2022 campaign, alongside Benedetti, Sarabia (who was pregnant at the time) oversaw the minutiae of Petro’s schedule. While Petro sent Benedetti to Caracas as his ambassador, he kept Sarabia by his side. In just nine months, Sarabia became very powerful as Petro’s right-hand woman in the presidency. As his gatekeeper, she managed his schedule and agenda (a challenging job with someone as notoriously unpunctual as Petro) as his private secretary. As his right-hand woman, she was Petro’s line of communication with ministers (Petro seldom talks to them outside of cabinet meetings) and with other parties and politicians in Congress. Sarabia also triumphed in a power struggle against Mauricio Lizcano, who was secretary-general of the presidency until late April (he received the ICT ministry as a consolation prize), and sidelined him as he lost Petro’s confidence. As a result, she also began managing the infamous “Palace computer”, the list of ‘marmalade’ (patronage appointments and pork-barrel spending) distributed by the government to political allies.
In May, Sarabia’s power and influence in the inner circle of the presidency attracted media attention, which she welcomed (unlike most of her predecessors). In El Tiempo, Sarabia boasted that she had become Petro’s shadow and what he needed. A profile in El País described her as being ten steps away from Petro. La Silla Vacía summarized her power and influence as “everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Armando Benedetti, Petro’s ambassador to Venezuela—to Nicolás Maduro, is a seasoned politician who joined Petro’s campaign in 2020. Benedetti served twenty years in Congress, as a representative (2002-2006) and then as senator (2006-2022), including one term as president of the Senate (2010-2011).
Benedetti has had multiple political lives. He began his political career in the 1990s as a Liberal and was elected to the House in 2002 under that banner, but within a few months he became an uribista and joined the new Partido de la U in 2005 (at the time, the new uribista party). He was elected to the Senate in 2006 with the slogan “100% with Uribe” and was one of the most prominent supporters of the referendum that’d have allowed Uribe to seek a third term in 2010 (the referendum was blocked by the Constitutional Court in February 2010). Later, Benedetti became an ally of President Juan Manuel Santos’ administration, supporting his reelection in 2014 and the peace process with the FARC. In opposition to Iván Duque’s government, Benedetti joined Petro’s campaign in the fall of 2020 and was promptly expelled from the Partido de la U.
Benedetti is a cunning and astute politician who knows how to maneuver his way into the centres of power. With a background in communications, Benedetti is outspoken, straightforward, self-confident and temperamental, and never shies away from a fight or an argument. Petro, in need of people like Benedetti, welcomed him even though he symbolized the clientelist and opportunistic political class that he’d criticized for years. Benedetti helped organize Petro’s campaign in the Caribbean, and later was in charge of Petro’s schedule and agenda during the campaign as well as the logistics for each campaign visit (including deals with local politicians).
Given the close rapport he had built with Petro during the campaign, Benedetti expected to be richly rewarded. He saw himself as a minister or in the president’s inner circle. Instead, Petro appointed him as ambassador to Venezuela, a very important posting given the importance Petro placed on reestablishing diplomatic relations with Nicolás Maduro (broken since 2019) and his ambition to be the regional leader in efforts to resolve the Venezuelan crisis. In Venezuela, Benedetti seemed to fall for Maduro, parroting the regime’s talking points and propaganda and criticizing the opposition and US sanctions. However, Benedetti always kept an eye on political developments in Bogotá.
While never formally charged, Benedetti has been investigated or mentioned in different scandals, including the Odebrecht scandal and an illicit enrichment case. Benedetti has fought back, always repeating that these are false accusations concocted by his enemy, former attorney general Néstor Humberto Martínez, who Benedetti called a ‘ruffian’.
The babysitter and the polygraph
On May 27, Semana’s cover story reported that Marelbys Meza, Sarabia’s former nanny, was forced to undergo a polygraph test in the basement of a government building, after being accused of stealing a briefcase filled with cash from Sarabia’s house.
On January 30, the same day that a police report was filed for a robbery at Laura Sarabia’s house, Meza was driven (by Sarabia’s driver) to a government building, in front of the presidential palace (Casa de Nariño), and taken to a basement. For four and a half hours, Meza was forced to undergo a polygraph test. The two men administering the polygraph asked her about the briefcase and the cash. She was intimidated, called a liar and a thief and threatened, told that they’d search her house and her relatives’ house. Meza told Semana that she was afraid and felt kidnapped, dazed and suffocated. Since then, Meza and her family claim that they’ve been followed and placed under surveillance.
A briefcase with cash had gone missing from Sarabia’s house the day before. She had already been questioned at the time by Sarabia’s husband and police investigators. Sarabia’s husband told her that he make sure nothing happened if she told him that she’d taken the briefcase, but that after that it’d be too late. It’s unclear how much money was in the briefcase: the police report said 30 million pesos ($7,200) but Meza was told that the real amount was closer to 150 million pesos ($36,000), a much more consequential sum of money. Sarabia later clarified that the theft reported was for an amount in US dollars not exceeding $7,000, in expenses payments for official travel in 2022, disputing claims of a “briefcase full of cash.”
Laura Sarabia told Semana that Meza willingly accepted to undergo a polygraph test and that she never forced her, and that she signed a consent form at the time. Sarabia added that her entire staff and family were subjected to polygraphs as part of security protocols given her position. After the story broke, the presidency published a statement denying any claims of abuse of power and misuse of public resources and arguing that all ‘procedures’ were legal and carried out according to existing legal procedures. Sarabia said that she was the victim of a robbery and that Meza was being investigated by the Fiscalía (prosecutor’s office), and that the presidential security and police acted within the framework of the law. Petro retweeted the official statement, commenting that “today was a day full of lies.”
For the presidency and Sarabia, the theft of the briefcase was a matter of ‘national security’, which would allow for the use of polygraph tests as part of an investigation. The defence minister, Iván Velásquez, and the director of the police, Gen. William Salamanca, both supported this argument. Petro on Twitter said that polygraph tests have been done for years for presidential security, sharing an article about polygraph tests carried out after an assassination attempt against Iván Duque in 2021. It’s a bizarre defence for a man who spent years attacking and criticizing nearly everything that Duque did, only to use “but Duque did it too, so it must be ok!” as a justification once he’s in power himself.
Gustavo Petro took to Sarabia’s defence, by doing what he likes most: attacking the media. Semana, the magazine which broke the story, moved sharply to the right since it was acquired by the Gilinski group in 2019-2020 and its editorial line has been very anti-Petro. Under its new owners, Semana’s business model has shifted towards clickbait digital media, sensationalism, editorializing, yellow journalism and sometimes fearmongering and disinformation. Vicky Dávila, the very anti-Petro director of Semana, rhetorically wondered why W Radio hadn’t covered the story she broke (implicitly referring to W Radio’s director Julio Sánchez Cristo allegedly being favoured by the president during a state visit to Spain in May). Petro angrily fired back, asking why there hadn’t been in-depth media attention to the significance of former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso’s testimony to the JEP, with his own rhetorical question “the objective is to destroy the mafia power or is the objective to destroy people because they’re by my side?” Dávila replied with her questions to him, mainly why Petro was “blindly defending” his chief of staff rather than a nanny who denounced horrible abuses.
The Fiscalía (prosecutors’ office) and Procuraduría (inspector general’s office, in charge of disciplinary proceedings against public officials) wasted no time in opening investigations against Sarabia. This scandal empowers attorney general Francisco Barbosa and inspector general Margarita Cabello, two opponents/rivals of Petro who often behave more as opposition politicians (in early May, Barbosa called Petro a dictator) than as heads of independent state bodies. Barbosa was quick to emphasize that the Fiscalía is the only entity that can investigate crimes. The Fiscalía and Procuraduría’s investigations further feed growing tensions with Petro.
Betrayal and blackmail
On May 31, Daniel Coronell on W Radio reported that sources close to Sarabia believed that Benedetti was blackmailing her with the scandal. Coronell’s story added more intrigue and revelations to this wild story.
Meza previously worked for Benedetti in 2022 and was already suspected of robbery (a pouch with 5 million pesos), while she worked for Benedetti, and had already undergone a polygraph test at the time (which she failed). In spite of this, for whatever reason, Benedetti recommended Meza’s name to Sarabia in August 2022—why recommend a nanny you had just fired and who had failed a polygraph test?
Relations between Sarabia and her former boss gradually worsened after she became chief of staff. Benedetti told Coronell that she paid less attention to him after that, while Sarabia’s entourage claim that he pressured her for bureaucratic reasons.
By May 2023, their relation became very bad. Benedetti said that his worst confrontation with Sarabia took place on the weekend of May 13-14. According to Benedetti, that weekend Sarabia offered him the interior or foreign ministry, and he responded with expletives (for offering him what she couldn’t give him).
On May 14, a private charter jet flew Meza from Bogotá to Barranquilla to pick up Benedetti and two other men before continuing onwards to Caracas, Venezuela. Benedetti said that taking Meza out of the country was Sarabia’s idea, to get her away from the media, but Sarabia’s sources said that she didn’t know about the flight to Caracas. After eight days in Venezuela, Meza returned to Bogotá in another private plane with Benedetti and his family. The next day, Benedetti met with Petro and later with Vicky Dávila. Meza gave her story to Semana that day. On May 23, Benedetti told Petro that he felt he’d finished his job in Caracas and asked to be appointed defence minister, which Petro declined but countered with an offer to make him ‘superminister’ or minister of the presidency (a vague but powerful portfolio held by Néstor Humberto Martínez under Santos in 2014-2015)—usurping Sarabia.
On May 25, Benedetti texted Sarabia: “I just spoke to Vicky after what you told me about Mari… you were right”, cryptically concluding “it’s possible that these circumstances can be avoided… I hope you understand the meaning of this message!”
Blackmail? Benedetti denied that it was, although he told Coronell that he was “only an accomplice in the end, with great pleasure.”
After Coronell’s article was published, Benedetti added clarifications on Twitter. He added that Sarabia called him on April 17 to say she was worried because her former nanny was talking to the press and asked him for help. That’s when the idea of taking her to Venezuela arose, he claims. Benedetti said that Sarabia’s problem was that they’d reveal the amount of money and cash flow in her house. Regarding the texts to Sarabia, Benedetti says that she was the first one to tell him about Meza talking to Vicky and that, from there, he called Vicky. He cryptically (prophetically?) wrote “why did she know? Is she wiretapping?”
Benedetti denied any blackmail or extortion, or building any conspiracy, and accused Sarabia of manipulating information. He said that his only “sin” was knowing that the story would be published and keeping quiet, but because of the veracity and seriousness of the facts, there was no way to stop it.
Wiretaps
On June 1, Cambio revealed that Meza’s phone conversations had been illegally monitored for about ten days—from January 30 to February 13—by the Dijín (the criminal investigation division of the Police). An agent of the Dijín in Chocó included Meza’s number as part of an investigation against the Clan del Golfo criminal organization. A few days later, on February 2, the agent had warned that the nanny’s number and that of another person (another of Sarabia’s employees) were irrelevant to the investigation, although the wiretaps were not suspended until February 13.
Attorney general Barbosa confirmed the illegal wiretaps (known as chuzadas in Colombia), declaring that “illegal wiretaps have returned to Colombia” in what he called a sad day for the rule of law and an attack on the autonomy and independence of the Fiscalía. Barbosa coined the term ‘para-justice’ to describe the illegal wiretaps, bypassing legal procedures. He compared the ways in which Meza was monitored and treated to ‘Gestapo methods’, which does seem like a bit of an exaggeration. In any case, the Fiscalía made clear that the scandal was a personal business and not a national security matter.
The Dijín agent spoke to W Radio (Daniel Coronell) a few days later, under cover of anonymity. They claimed that they received the numbers from an informant, who had previously provided reliable information, and not from a superior in the police. The Dijín agent also claimed that while the phones were illegally tapped, a prosecutor investigating the robbery (legally) ordered the nanny’s number to be monitored. If so, did the Fiscalía know of these wiretaps as early as February?
The illegal wiretaps (chuzadas) are bad on their own, but particularly damaging for Petro and the left. During Álvaro Uribe’s administration (2002-2010), Petro (an opposition senator at the time) along with opposition politicians, journalists, judges, prosecutors, civil society leaders and human rights activists, was illegally wiretapped by the now-defunct intelligence agency (DAS). The chuzadas scandal made Petro a victim, persecuted by the state, but the ‘return of the chuzadas’ hits the left like a boomerang, with Petro as the persecutor.
In a late-night tweet on June 1, Petro stated that no member of the government had given any order for wiretaps and said that “accusing the government of change of illegal wiretaps is very irresponsible.” The left has struggled to respond to the chuzadas. Pacto senator Clara López (a former interim mayor of Bogotá, cabinet minister and 2014 presidential candidate) arrogantly said that you couldn’t compare “wiretapping a servant with wiretapping a court.”
Crisis mode in the Palace
The scandal put the presidency in crisis mode. Petro cancelled his entire schedule on June 1, and summoned Benedetti and Sarabia. Initially scheduled for 9am at CATAM military airfield, the meeting finally only began at 10pm. A WhatsApp screenshot accidentally shared (and quickly deleted) by Benedetti shows that Petro texted him at 1pm “OK. For today it’s silence from both of you. We’ll see how things work out.”
Details of the meeting indicate that it was tense. Things got heated, she cried and he yelled. In the end, Petro was forced to dismiss both Sarabia and Benedetti. Benedetti’s resignation was supposed to be effective from June 23, but his term as ambassador was extended to July 19.
Petro announced their ‘withdrawal from the government’ at a military event the next day. He was much sadder to part ways with Sarabia, his trusted right-hand woman, than he was about Benedetti: he referred to her as “my dear and esteemed public servant” while only cursorily mentioning him as ‘the ambassador to Venezuela’. Moreover, Petro was effusive in praising and defending her, describing the emotional toll on a “young woman who just gave birth to her first child”. In his speech, Petro said that the government respects human rights and does not illegally wiretap opponents. He said that his doors are open to any investigation, and that ‘they’ can investigate as far as they want and that he will assist them—but sent a thinly-veiled message to Barbosa, saying that “the official who is accusing us of this [wiretaps] should investigate well” while complaining about the delays in raiding the homes of Clan del Golfo assassins and in sending him a report on the assassination of social leaders.
Prior to the meeting, La Silla Vacía reported that Petro’s inner circle was worried that Benedetti could blackmail the president, given Benedetti’s clear annoyance with Petro for the secondary role he was given in the government. Benedetti, who controlled Petro’s agenda during the campaign and organized the campaign in the Caribbean, knows about the secret details of how the campaign was financed (in early May, before the scandal even erupted, La Silla had reported that the campaign didn’t properly report payments for its large operation of election witnesses/scrutineers). The president’s closest allies worried that Benedetti could use that information as a bargaining chip to blackmail Petro.
The leaks
Petro’s fears proved correct. On June 4, Semana revealed explosive leaked voice messages from Benedetti to Sarabia. An angry, emotional and unstable Benedetti makes clear that he knows very damaging information about the 2022 campaign and threatens Sarabia and Petro with it. Among other things, he threatens that “with all the shit I know, we’re all screwed, yes, you screw me, I screw you”, “I know enough to end the world” and most explosively “we all sink, we all go to jail.”
Benedetti, feeling disrespected and not properly rewarded for his work, says that Petro owed his victory to him—“a guy who did 100 meetings in a campaign, a guy who got 15,000 million pesos [over $3.6 million]”, “I was the one who organized all the votes on the Costa [Caribbean coast].” Benedetti threatens to spill the beans about “who gave the money here on the Costa” and refers to the Proceso 8.000 in the 90s (insinuating the money may have come from drug traffickers).
Throughout the conversations, Benedetti constantly belittles and insults Sarabia—calling her stupid, uneducated, incompetent and ungrateful—and reminds her that she owes everything to him. However, he also says that he didn’t recommend her for the job to Petro but rather that she was chosen by first lady Verónica Alcocer “and you know why.” Benedetti repeatedly tells her that he doesn’t want “her fucking job” but that he demands a “political space”, more specifically talking about the interior ministry or the foreign ministry (saying that he’d be more helpful to her at interior).
In the leaked recordings, Benedetti repeatedly criticizes Petro (and calls him an hijueputa) and the administration, saying the government is going badly (“they don’t govern, they don’t do anything […] everything is shit”). He also criticizes Sarabia for Petro’s imprudent use of Twitter, particularly his May 17 tweet (later deleted) claiming that the military had found the four missing children in the jungle after a plane crash (they were later found alive in June).
Benedetti also attacks former interior minister Alfonso Prada, saying that he “robbed all the ministry with his wife.”
Semana’s leaked audios are edited and the timeframe in which they take place is unclear (presumably in May). Benedetti quickly tweeted after their publication that the audio recordings had been manipulated but apologized to Petro and Sarabia for the “aggression and malicious attack that does NOT come from me.” The next day he tweeted “I have been a fundamental part of the current political project of President Petro” but that because he was “not satisfied with what corresponded to me politically, in an act of weakness and sadness I let myself be carried away by rage and drinking.”
Petro’s initial reaction to the leaks was… interesting: he posted a smiling selfie with his daughter Sofía with the text “restless? No way!” More seriously, the next day he posted a long tweet in which he reiterated that nobody in his administration had ordered wiretaps or illegal raids or accepted blackmail for public jobs or contracts, denied that his campaign ever received money from drug traffickers or handled figures like 15,000 million pesos off the books, said that he doesn’t accept blackmail and doesn’t see politics as a space for personal favours. Petro said: “I think I understand what is happening in Armando Benedetti’s mind, I accept his apologies but he must explain his words before the Fiscalía and the country.”
On June 7, at a pro-government rally, Petro defiantly denied the wiretaps and claimed that “Semana orders and the CTI (Fiscalía’s investigative unit) obeys.” He went on to complain that Barbosa had done nothing to investigate the illegal wiretaps against his 2022 campaign (the Petrovideos released by Semana during the runoff campaign).
In spite of Petro’s ostensible calmness, the leaks are highly damaging for the government, with clear signals—but no proof or evidence—of illegal, potentially criminal, activities in Petro’s campaign and administration.
A mysterious suicide
On June 9, police Lt. Colonel Óscar Dávila, a member of the presidential security staff, was found dead in his car in Bogotá. Days before, Dávila had sent a letter to attorney general Barbosa offering to testify in the Sarabia case. In the administrative structure of the presidency, the presidential security unit is under the authority of the chief of staff’s office.
Petro and his inner circles quickly said that his death was a suicide. Petrista lawyer Miguel Ángel del Rio, who was his lawyer, said that Dávila had killed himself and claimed that he was being intimidated and threatened by an agent of the Fiscalía. On Twitter the next morning, Petro wrote that Dávila shot himself with his driver’s pistol while the driver was out of the car, and that only one shot was fired. The defence minister also said it was a suicide.
Not everyone was convinced. Several journalists had legitimate questions about the circumstances of his death and immediate aftermath. Other columnists and political commentators launched into speculations, conjectures and conspiracies. More mysteries and questions arose. W Radio revealed that, on the day of his death, Dávila had paid a 50 million pesos cash advance to del Río for his legal defence, which raised questions as to why someone who is thinking of committing suicide would pay a cash advance to a lawyer. On top of that, on that same day, in the afternoon, Dávila talked on the phone with a journalist from Cambio, who was asking him to comment on the Fiscalía’s theory that Dávila and his boss, colonel Carlos Feria (head of presidential protection) had arranged the polygraph and the illegal wiretaps (by calling in a favour with a contact at the Dijín). Dávila said that he couldn’t discuss the issue because “better said, they finish me off” (me acaban) and gave no answers.
On June 21, the autopsy by Medicina Legal (the forensic science agency under the Fiscalía) concluded that Dávila committed suicide.
Confidential sources and a warning
On June 14, Semana published the testimony of a ‘confidential source’ who claimed to have spoken about the scandal with colonel Dávila. The explosive testimony of this unidentified witness, about the money stolen from Sarabia’s house, was: “the money belonged to Petro, there were five suitcases and 3,000 million pesos ($720,000).” According to Semana’s source, Dávila told them that Petro had Sarabia keep the money and when it was lost, Feria and Dávila launched the illegal operation to recover the lost money at any cost. Dávila was in charge of arranging the polygraph and the illegal wiretaps, and he fell under increasing stress and pressure once the scandal erupted.
Semana said its source is identified but his/her identity is kept confidential to protect them. Semana did not corroborate or confirm their source’s testimony with other persons.
Petro responded through a statement—rather than a tweet—in which he said that never in his life has he even seen the quantity of money mentioned and therefore the claims are false and defamatory. More than these denials and refutations, however, what’s interesting about Petro’s statement is the thinly-veiled warning to Semana’s owners, the Gilinski family. Petro says that he has been friends with the Gilinski family, that they are first-rate witnesses to his honour and reminds them that he has remained neutral in their fight with the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (GEA). The last point is an implicit warning that he could stop being their friend and use the government’s regulatory powers against them—for example, regulatory approval of the Gilinski family’s recent deal to acquire a controlling stake in Nutresa in exchange for exiting their stakes Grupo Sura and Grupo Argos.
It’s unclear if the Gilinski family have received the message. Following the explosive claims made in the article published on June 14, many expected that Semana’s next issue would include more revelations or details from the initial story. Instead, the cover story was an interview with football star James Rodríguez. This fed rumors—both from left-wing and right-wing social media ecosystems—that Gabriel Gilinski, the owner of Semana, had fired Vicky Dávila. Left-leaning Cambio columnist/journalist María Jimena Duzán speculated that Gilinski, as a pragmatic businessman, may want to get rid off Vicky Dávila to favour his economic interests. Gilinski denied these rumors, as did Vicky Dávila. Nevertheless, many protesters in the large opposition/right-wing protests organized in June 20, marched in support of Vicky Dávila and freedom of the press.
Theories of coups and scandals
Petro’s opponents and critics—including the right-leaning media—claim that this scandal is the biggest scandal in Colombian politics since the Proceso 8.000. Some, like Semana, have already started calling this scandal the Proceso 15.000 (because of the 15,000 million pesos mentioned by Benedetti in the leaked audios) and drawn comparisons to the scandal that shook Samper’s presidency in the 1990s. For Petro’s opponents, this scandal is proof that the government is corrupt and rotten to the core.
It’s obvious that this scandal is extremely damaging to the government. It has all the elements of a juicy, scandalous affair: abuse of power by a senior government official, briefcases full of cash (allegedly), polygraphs in dark basements, illegal wiretaps, stories of betrayals and blackmail, explosive leaked audio recordings, a mysterious suicide that feels suspicious to many, complete with claims and rumors of corruption, narco ties and dirty money at the highest levels of power.
The fact that the victim of this scandal is a poor, humble and vulnerable woman also is a huge blow to the government’s rhetoric in favour of the poor, the humble and los nadies (the nobodies). Petro was criticized for siding with his chief of staff—a young woman from a privileged background (a military family)—instead of believing the story of a ‘poor, humble woman’.
On the government’s side, Petro and his supporters see this scandal as a trumped-up scandal concocted as a sordid plot by its enemies in high places, like Barbosa’s Fiscalía, further evidence of what they claim is a ‘soft coup’ (golpe blando) against the ‘government of change’ or ‘the first progressive government’.
Even before the scandal erupted, Petro had started talking of a golpe blando against him in the wake of several decisions by the courts (the Council of State) and the Procuraduría against Pacto Histórico congressmen and government officials. In February, inspector general Margarita Cabello suspended Daniel Rojas, the president of the SAE (the seized assets management agency) and a Petro favourite, although his suspension was revoked a few days later. In May, the Procuraduría suspended Pacto senator Alex Flórez for eight months for a drunken meltdown with cops in Cartagena in September 2022, during which he drunkenly insulted and harassed police officers after he was refused entrance to a luxury hotel in Cartagena accompanied by a young woman (likely a prostitute). The Procuraduría has laid charges, which would result in suspension, against Pacto senator Wilson Arias for “slanderous statements” against police officers during the 2021 protests (he accused them of torturing young protesters who had been detained). The disciplinary body has open investigations against four other Pacto members of Congress, including the president of the House, David Racero, and senator María José Pizarro. The Pacto caucus has announced that it will seek precautionary measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to protect their political rights, in response to the Procuraduría’s actions.
In somewhat related but quite different decisions, the Council of State invalidated the election of senator Roy Barreras (the president of the Senate) on May 5 and suspended the election of senator César Pachón (Pacto senator), both for doble militancia (a legal term which literally means membership in/support for more than one political party, widely interpreted by courts).
In reaction to these decisions, Petro denounced, on Twitter, a golpe blando to “take away the votes of Pacto congressmen” and “changing de facto the political representation elected by the people in Congress” (two false or misleading claims). This earned him a reprimand from the Council of State before he later clarified that he was referring to the Procuraduría’s decision, not those of the administrative court. The head of Dejusticia, a respected legal think tank, said that there is no golpe blando all while criticizing the political biases and behaviour of Barbosa and Cabello.
With the scandal, Petro has repeated his claims. On Twitter, on June 5, Petro denounced a golpe blando to “stop the fight against impunity.” On June 7, at a somewhat successful pro-government rally organized by the government, Petro explained his theory of the golpe blando. He described it as a strategy—or sinister plot—to destroy the government’s popular support to isolate him from the people, to build mistrust in his popular base to defeat the reforms in Congress and bring Congress to kneel to the ‘owners of big capital’. Once the reforms are defeated and the government is isolated, they would destroy it in the Commission of Accusations of the House of Representatives (the commission recommending impeachment procedures against public officials), “to do exactly the same thing that was done in Peru” (against Pedro Castillo), taking the president to jail and installing a new president not elected by the people (who would be the president of the Senate/Congress that will be elected in July). Petro, however, proclaimed that the people was on his side and that the Colombian people would defend democracy and the ‘people’s government’. Petro said ‘they’ were outraged that he’s an honest president who doesn’t allow himself to get blackmailed, who doesn’t “urinate in his pants” if the richest man in Colombia invites him to lunch and who doesn’t put himself at the service of big business. As I’ll explain later, Petro’s big theories are rather far-fetched.
In the specific case of the wiretaps, Petro and his inner circle believe that the wiretaps were part of an entrapment plot by the Fiscalía against Sarabia and him. Petrista lawyer Miguel Ángel del Río, who is defending the Chocó Dijín agent who requested the wiretap against Marelbys Meza (based on a false report), has claimed that the Fiscalía is responsible for the wiretaps. Petro and del Río have played on the agent’s claim, made to Daniel Coronell on W Radio, that prosecutor investigating the robbery had also ordered the nanny’s number to be monitored. On his favourite social media platform, the president said that this claim invalidated the Fiscalía’s theory that the government ordered the wiretaps.
Del Río’s entrapment theory is based on this claim and irregularities in the Fiscalía’s behaviour: namely that the prosecutor in Quibdó (Chocó) who authorized the wiretaps never verified the source of the information, that the wiretaps continued for 7 days after the Dijín agent alerted the prosecutor that the tapped phone lines were not relevant, that the Fiscalía in Bogotá ordered the same lines to be tapped during the investigation of the robbery and del Río’s suspicion that the agent’s informant had ties to the Quibdó prosecutor. Del Río argues that the Fiscalía, through an informant, deceived the Dijín agent so that he’d make a (false) report, all while knowing that there’d be a legal wiretap ordered for the investigation of the robbery in Bogotá. Barbosa has never said that the prosecutor in charge of the robbery case ordered wiretaps. As La Silla Vacía explained, the entrapment theory has several holes. Perhaps the biggest one is that it presupposes a scheme in which the highest levels of the Fiscalía convinced an anonymous informant, who is an active member of the Clan del Golfo, to report two phone numbers (that of Meza and Sarabia’s other employee) to a Dijín agent in order to conspire against the government, all in less than 24 hours (but then keep this information secret for 4 months).
The aftermath
What will be the judicial and political aftermath of this scandal?
The Fiscalía has several open investigations—for the robbery, the polygraph test and the illegal wiretaps. Sarabia testified in the robbery case in which she is the victim, reiterating what she had previously declared (including that the stolen briefcase had around $7,000 as well as personal effects and official documents). Colonel Carlos Feria, the head of presidential security, testified on June 21, and reportedly said that the late colonel Dávila had directly ordered the polygraph test. This version was also repeated by other lower-ranking police officers.
The Fiscalía is also investigating illegal financing of the Petro 2022 campaign, based on Benedetti’s claims of getting 15,000 million pesos for the campaign (off the books).
Prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes will lead the investigation against Benedetti and former interior minister Alfonso Prada (the campaign manager). Jaimes is famous for being the prosecutor who asked to close the witness tampering case against Álvaro Uribe in 2020-2022, which was denied by a judge in April 2022. As prosecutor, Jaimes also closed an illicit enrichment investigation against Benedetti. In early June, Supreme Court judge Cristina Lombana asked that Jaimes be investigated, alleging irregularities in his decision to close the case against Benedetti. Lombana claimed that there was sufficient evidence to continue the investigation.
Given attorney general Barbosa’s confrontational relation with Petro, the Fiscalía wants to investigate—unlike in the past, when there was some sort of tacit pact not to investigate anything that’d threaten institutional stability. La Silla Vacía speculates that the Fiscalía could offer the so-called principle of opportunity (prosecutorial discretion) to Benedetti or Sarabia if they provide evidence of illegal campaign financing.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) is also investigating potential illegal financing of Petro’s 2022 campaign. The CNE is in charge of monitoring campaign financing, campaign spending limits and the campaigns’ financial statements. Since February 2023, the CNE has been investigating at least a dozen complaints against Petro’s campaign, accused of breaking campaign spending limits. The CNE summoned Benedetti and Sarabia to testify on June 5, and their testimony is currently scheduled for July 18.
However, the CNE is a very political body whose nine magistrates are elected by Congress, effectively in representation of political parties. Few of its magistrates are experts in electoral law or experienced legal professionals—in fact, most tend to be retired politicians or allies of powerful political figures. As it is not an electoral court, the CNE’s investigative and judicial capacity is very limited. Three of the CNE’s nine magistrates are from governing parties (two from the Pacto and one of the Greens), and another three are from the Liberals (two, though one is suspended) and the Partido de la U (one), and have tended to be pro-government. Decisions require a two-thirds majority. Moreover, the CNE is presided by the Pacto’s Fabiola Márquez until August. In mid-June, the CNE finally agreed to create an internal commission to investigate Petro’s campaign. The commission is led by magistrates Benjamín Ortíz (Liberal) and former uribista representative Álvaro Hernán Prada (who must stand trial as co-conspirator in Uribe’s witness tampering case).
Petro’s theory of the golpe blando is far-fetched. According to Petro, the big conspiracy against him entails destroying the government, removing him from office, taking him to jail and installing a new unelected president—effectively what happened to Pedro Castillo in Peru, which Petro has taken as some kind of ominous warning of what (he thinks) his enemies want to do to him. However, the similarities between the two cases are limited, and Petro conveniently continues to whitewash Castillo’s own responsibility in the Peruvian crisis (i.e. his botched autogolpe attempt).
In Colombia, the president and other senior officials (judges and the attorney general) have a special fuero. The House of Representative’s Commission of Accusations is the commission responsible for investigating all complaints against the president and bringing impeachment charges against the president. Like in the United States, an eventual impeachment trial would take place in the Senate, with a guilty verdict requiring a two-thirds majority. There are two complaints against Petro before the commission, filed by uribista senator Miguel Uribe Turbay and 2022 right-wing presidential candidate Fico Gutiérrez respectively, both asking that Petro be investigated for illegal campaign financing.
Unlike in other Latin American countries, no sitting Colombian president has ever been impeached and the only president to have been impeached and convicted was former dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in 1958-9, after he left power (his conviction was overturned in 1967). In 1996, during the Proceso 8.000, the House voted to dismiss the accusations against President Ernesto Samper. Since then, the commission did formally accuse three corrupt judges (Jorge Pretelt, Gustavo Malo and José Leonidas Bustos)—Pretelt’s trial in the Senate in 2016 was the first impeachment trial since Rojas Pinilla’s trial in 1959. Because the commission has only rarely accused anyone, it’s earned the moniker “commission of absolutions”.
Therefore, it’s exceedingly unlikely that Petro will be impeached. The current commission of accusations is made up of 18 representatives, and according to La Silla Vacía, 12 of them are members of the governing coalition or have voted with the government.
Petro’s golpe blando conspiracies are very unlikely to play out. But they show how the government intends to defend itself politically in this scandal: defiantly ramping up populist rhetoric and attacks on the (right-wing) media, and presenting the scandal as part of a sordid plot by evil forces to destroy Petro and the people’s government.
The global left has rallied behind Petro’s idea of a golpe blando. Petro proudly showed off a June 7 statement (from the Progressive International) signed by over 400 left-wing leaders, entitled “A soft coup is underway in Colombia” and denouncing an attempt by “Colombia’s traditional powers” to restore the old order, now “deploying the combined institutional power of the country’s regulatory agencies, media conglomerates, and judiciary branch to halt its reforms.” The signatories include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Ernesto Samper, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Rafael Correa, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and many academics, legislators, union leaders and retired politicians.
The idea that he’s a victim of a plot might deepen Petro’s conspiratorial and paranoiac tendencies. He may entrench himself with the circle of loyalists in the government. Petro has not yet found a replacement for Sarabia and he’s also lost his main communications adviser, creating a power struggle within the administration.
His administration’s relations with Congress and the parties, already quite fraught since the spring, will worsen in the upcoming legislative year, which begins July 20. With the impact of the scandal, attention on the local elections in the fall (which could be a big setback to the government, at least in major cities) and difficulties in the government’s new strategy of negotiating directly with congressmen rather than party leaderships, Petro will have a even harder time getting his reforms through in Congress in the second half of 2023. While he may still have some victories in Congress, and American-like ‘divided government’ remains unlikely in Colombia, an impatient Petro will look to executive power—decrees and the regulatory powers of government agencies—to implement his policies.
The Sarabia-Benedetti scandal is the most damaging scandal for Petro and the government up till now. It’s destabilized the government, and its judicialization will continue to haunt the government for months. With Petro’s popularity quite low, the scandal is an unwanted additional headache for the government. The scandal also feeds a growing sense of disillusion that the ‘government of change’ isn’t all that different from previous ones, at least in its ethical behaviour.