The son of the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, will have to sit in the dock. Nicolas Petro broke his agreement with the Attorney General to sign a principle of opportunity that guaranteed him a light sentence. Now, he risks being sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if he is convicted of illicit enrichment y money laundering.
“Today, the fight of my life begins, I knew that the Prosecutor’s Office Francisco Barbosa He was not trustworthy and today they showed it. They have pushed me to the limit with the sole intention of turning me into a weapon against my father. “I decided to get up and not kneel before the executioner,” he wrote on his Instagram account. X (formerly Twitter) the accused.
He did so after learning that the Attorney General’s Office had decided to take him to trial for the aforementioned crimes, committed while he was a deputy of the Atlantic Assembly, northern department of the South American nation whose capital is Barranquilla. According to the political magazine Weekon at least two occasions the prosecutor in charge of the case had tried to interview Nicolás Petro at his home, but the regional politician stood him up.
The last phrase of the message – “I decided to get up and not kneel before my executioner” – is a copy of what the president of Colombia said in a public event to attack the attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, with whom he has had a confrontation for many years. . In this way, it indicates that we are facing political persecution, not a judicial case.
“Nicolás Petro made the decision to immolate himself against what he himself said. He knows that legally he has no way to defend himself because he cannot justify the difference between his income, which totals about 240 million a year, and the amount of 1,000 million that he invested in a house,” he explains to EL MUNDO Francisco Bernatepresident of College of Criminal Lawyers of Colombia. “To illicit enrichment, therefore, money laundering can be added. It should be remembered that, in our legislation, due to this figure that was included in 1995 to combat corruption, a public official can only live off his salary, unless he has an explanation for your additional income, such as an inheritance, for example.”