Regarding Óscar Iván Zuluaga’s confession about the inflow of Odebrecht money to his campaign in 2014, here are three things we should not forget about the Odebrecht scandal in Colombia.

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1. Prepaid bribes to the candidates of Juan Manuel Santos and Óscar Iván Zuluaga

Odebrecht is a Brazilian firm with business in the field of engineering and construction.

The company’s operations are not only in engineering projects. Odebrecht turned out to be an expert in building sophisticated transnational bribery networks:

In 2010, it financed part of the Colombian presidential campaign of Juan Manuel Santos and Angelino Garzón as his vice presidential running mate.

In 2014, Odebrecht again financed the campaign of Santos and Vargas Lleras as vice president, along with that of his opponent Óscar Iván Zuluaga and Carlos Homes Trujillo.

Two horses of the same owner, with which he won with both heads or tails.

But it was not only illegal financing, they were real prepaid bribes, so whoever won had to return that “support” multiplied, handing over contracts worth billions of pesos, with overpricing, expensive tolls, contract additions, etc. All this at the expense of our pockets.

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2. Odebrecht and Grupo Aval’s pocket prosecutor

While in other countries the scandal ended with presidents behind bars, in Colombia everything remained in the middle management thanks to the then Attorney General of the Nation, Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira.

From the Attorney General’s Office, Néstor Humberto dedicated himself to the “tapen-tapen”, filed investigations, let the Brazilians blow away and for the issue of the campaigns of Juan Manuel Santos and Óscar Iván Zuluaga, he only referred the cases to the National Electoral Council, entity that did nothing about it.

3. Press and political control: key in a democracy

Thanks to investigative journalism and the 5 debates of then Senator Robledo, all of Colombia was able to know that Odebrecht’s money was in the pockets of prosecutor Martínez Neira.

After the revelation, people mobilized and got the prosecutor Martínez Neira to resign, which allowed the country to know an important part of this scandal.

In conclusion:

One, let Óscar Iván Zuluaga answer to justice!

Two, we cannot forget the political responsibility of Juan Manuel Santos, Germán Vargas Lleras, Álvaro Uribe and their friends.

And three, remember that the Odebrecht case is an example that an active citizenry is capable of making the corrupt tremble.

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