The recording in which Oscar Iván Zuluaga acknowledges that illegal money from the transnational corporation Odebrecht did enter his 2014 campaign -$1.6 million- confirms what I stated in five debates in the Senate plenary, between 2017 and 2021.

Because before this confession it was already established that Odebrecht’s money entered Juan Manuel Santos’ campaigns in 2014 and 2010 -although he has not been charged by Justice-, a year in which, against Mockus, all the traditional political forces of Colombia supported him.

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The severity of what happened justifies detailing this story.

The beginning of this scandal dates back to the Lava Jato case, in Brazil, with the corruption of powerful entrepreneurs and especially of Marcelo Odebrecht, captured by the Brazilian Justice in June 2015 and sentenced to prison in the following March.

Odebrecht operated in twelve countries, in partnership with local companies and individuals. In Colombia, it had partnerships and contracts with Grupo Aval companies.

What can be called the Odebrecht “system” consisted of financing the country’s political class leaders in their electoral frauds, so that they, as rulers and in corrupt public works contracts, would pay for the “investment”. In Colombia, Odebrecht, with Navelena, was left with the great business of the Magdalena River and, with the Ruta del Sol 02 Consortium, with a long highway to the northern coast.

The bribes, paid during the Uribe and Santos governments, amounted to at least eleven million dollars.

If Oscar Iván Zuluaga ends up convicted, it was not because the Prosecutor’s Office unmasked him, but because Daniel García Arizabaleta -convicted for corruption during the first government of Álvaro Uribe, later a senior leader of the Democratic Center, a well-known Odebrecht paid token in Colombia and Zuluaga’s accomplice-, decided to record and grass on him. Without García, who spoke to protect himself – today he lives in Miami -, Zuluaga’s previously known business with Odebrecht would continue in impunity, as it happened for six long years.

In Semana, on April 8, 2019, Daniel Coronell showed that Eleuberto Martorelli, head of Odebrecht in Colombia, explained to the Brazilian Justice his twisted dealings with Zuluaga and García Arizabaleta.

In Zuluaga’s recordings, it appears that the process in the National Electoral Council about his campaign and Santos’ campaign did not advance because the majorities of that Council of the partidocracy -Santistas and Zuluaguistas- agreed to mutual acquittal.

Among those dissatisfied with the development of the investigation of the Odebrecht case in Colombia are the Department of Justice and the FBI of the United States, which in 2022 published a notice offering a five million dollar reward to those who help “recover assets of the Colombian kleptocracy” at the service of Odebrecht.

In my opinion, if something has gone wrong among Colombians, it was that Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira was elected Attorney General of the Nation and had not declared himself impeded to act in one hundred percent of the aspects of the Odebrecht case, even if other prosecutors had been in charge of processing the files.

Given Martínez Neira’s numerous and large business dealings with Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo and Odebrecht -prior to being Prosecutor-, this was required by laws 1437 of 2011 and 906 of 2004. And because, in my opinion, so many closenesses did not allow him to act with the blindfold of the effigy of Justice explained by Bernard Shaw: “Justice lies in impartiality, and only strangers can be impartial”.

Bogotá, July 7, 2023.

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