The Attorney General’s Office will investigate the mayor of Cúcuta for possible inconsistencies in commission abroad.
Photo: Mayor’s Office of Cúcuta
The Attorney General’s Office began a preliminary investigation of the current mayor of Cúcuta (Norte de Santander), Jorge Acevedo Peñaloza, for alleged irregularities that had arisen during a secondment that he was carrying out outside the country. Acevedo would have requested permission to attend an event in Amsterdam (Netherlands), however, according to a media outlet, he would have published on his networks that he was in Barcelona, Spain.
After the publication, the control entity took on the task of investigating the information shared by the media. According to the note, the mayor asked the municipal council for permission to attend an invitation from the company EFC SERVICE GmbH, in the Netherlands, between March 20 and 28, 2024. During the visit, it is assumed that they would talk to him about technological innovations to the management and use of urban solid waste.
In fact, according to the journalistic investigation, the invitation letter that Mayor Acevedo received from the company would have its location in Viersen, a small city in Germany, and not in the Netherlands. When reviewing the address that appears in the letter, the media found that there is only an aquarium plant store there.
The Attorney General’s Office also seeks to establish why it left Miguel Armando Castellanos Serrano in charge of the mayor’s office, from March 26 to April 1, 2024, under the argument of being on a commission, when he would presumably be in a different place. The Public Ministry is collecting the pertinent information and evidence to clarify the facts.
In October of last year, Acevedo won the regional elections in Cúcuta as an independent candidate with the support of the ‘All for Cúcuta’ movement, after having been a candidate on four previous occasions. The difference between the current mayor and Leonardo Jácome was below 1%, the first obtained 89,759 votes (28.47%), while Jácome came in second place with 87,445 votes (27.73%).
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