The Colombian prosecutor’s office investigates a son of Gustavo Petro for possible money laundering and encounters with drug traffickers

The prosecutor’s office is criminally investigating Nicolás Petro, the eldest son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, for his alleged encounters with drug traffickers in prison and for “possible money laundering”, as denounced on Tuesday by the prosecutor’s office.

“Units of the Nation’s Attorney General’s Office are investigating the criminal case and also in the case of property or possible money laundering, these are the progress that has been made,” Attorney General Francisco Barbosa said in statements to the media.

The prosecutor’s office began, earlier this month, investigating the allegations against deputy Nicolás Petro, who his ex-wife claims she received money from a drug dealer for his father’s presidential campaign which, however, never reached that goal.

The president himself asked to be investigated -both to this who is the eldest of his children and to his brother Juan Fernando Petro- to “determine his responsibilities”, although he has always been “confident” that his innocence can be “proved”.

The accusations

“There is the presumption of innocence and there are judicial guarantees, what happens is that all the investigations by the Prosecutor’s Office are always focused on people in the criminal field and on assets so that there are no assets related to criminal activities”, he stated. This Tuesday the prosecutor made statements to the media.

The ex-wife of Petro’s son, Day Vásquez, assured in an interview with the magazine Week that the drug trafficker Samuel Santander Lopesierra, alias “the Marlboro man”, gave to Nicolás Petro, a deputy of the Departmental Assembly of the Atlántico, “more than 600 million pesos (about $124,700 today) for dad’s campaign”.

“This never legally made it to the campaign because he kept that moneyand so on,” added the woman, who said Nicolás Petro also received 200 million pesos (about $41,500) from businessman Alfonso “Turco” Hilsaca, who also didn’t go to the campaign.

And he added: “Everything he has done since 2022, finishing 2021 well and starting 2022, which was the electoral or pre-election period”.

According to the information posted on the portal the empty chairVásquez allegedly communicated all this information to another of Petro’s daughters, Andrea, who would pass it on to her father before the end of last year, but until now, when the information would be made public in the Semana interview, the president would not act.

As regards the investigation against Juan Fernando Petro, the president’s brother, the public prosecutor’s office has already opened an “official criminal file” since 23 January (an investigation to verify whether there are indications of a crime), because the his name was related to A alleged payments made by drug traffickers obtain quotas with peace of mind, while declaring yourself a victim of identity theft.