A scandal of alleged corruption surrounds the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (Ungrd) in Colombia, focused on the acquisition of tank trucks to supply La Guajira with water.
Sneyder Pinilla, a former official of the entity and previously considered the right arm of former director Olmedo López, has implicated congressmen, ministers and people close to President Gustavo Petro in the case, suggesting their participation in the controversial business. Pinilla has uncovered the existence of an alleged flow of $4,000 million to the Congress. This sum, he claimed, would have been used to facilitate the approval of government reforms.
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The political sector reacted to this new Government scandal called “Sneyderpolitics”. Several politicians asked for speed in the investigations and for exemplary sanctions.
One of them was Senator David Luna, who noted: “The country needs and deserves to know the truth immediately about the corruption scandal with the La Guajira tank trucks. Above all, because if it is true that there are public servants involved, President Petro’s reforms would be tainted by corruption”.
And he added, through a video shared on The president said that he was going to fight corruption, but members of his government are immersed in that scandal, as well as members of Congress (…) justice must be relentless to determine who is responsible,” Luna said.
The Democratic Center also spoke out, and in a statement rejected this act of corruption that occurs within the current Government. In addition, he asked for speed in the investigations into the tank truck scandal in La Guajira: “We call on the justice system to act promptly in the investigation and clarification of the facts reported in Semana Magazine.”
For the opposition party, the Government must respond to this complaint, which “once again casts a pall of doubt on the way officials in the UNGRD act.” “(…) Corruption is a tragedy that takes away the trust of Colombians and destroys any possibility of political, economic and social progress.“, they concluded.
Likewise, Senator Iván Cepeda stated that it is important that the relevant investigations be carried out to clarify what happened: “Regarding allegations of corruption that implicate national government officials, there must be an investigation with effective and prompt results. If found responsible, exemplary sanctions without delay”, he wrote in X.
For her part, Senator Angélica Lozano assured, in an interview with The FMthat the Government of Gustavo Petro “has kidnapped the Green Party”, since they prevent them from declaring independence in exchange for positions like that of Sandra Ortiz.
In fact, the party announced that it opened an investigation against the president of the Senate, Iván Name, for statements by Sneyder Pinilla. The Ethical Control Council of that community will also investigate the presidential advisor for the regions.
“Brutal, there has to be justice very soon because it cannot be that corruption moves the State apparatus and Congress. It is very serious that people like Sandra Ortiz and Senator (Iván) Name, who are part of the Green party, muddy the name of the party. Here we have waged a strong fight against corruption and they have us prisoners in a Government condition, “For them to maintain positions like that of Sandra Ortiz is that they have kidnapped the Green, at the service of the Government,” Lozano told the aforementioned media.
The congresswoman was clear in saying that the Green Party is on the side of justice and that “whoever has to fall falls” in order to “free the Green Party, who has been kidnapped from us to put him at the service of the Government.”
In the same sense, the former mayor of Bogotá Claudia López said that the officials involved in this new scandal: “They turned out to be the same or worse: a ticket to buy support for the campaign, to buy support for the government, to buy impunity. What a disgusting manipulation of the word ‘change’”.
He then stated that: “The fight against corruption has been, is and will be the cause of our life. The only one that has united us above all. The one that cleanly won the greatest support in our history at the polls and in the streets with the #Anticorruption Consultation and the Mockusian conviction that Not Everything Goes! Free the Green majorities from the kidnapping imposed by the Petrist minority. Let’s free Colombia from corruption!”.
In contrast to what was said by Angélica Lozano and Claudia López, Bogotá councilor Daniel Briceño attacked the Green Party: “(…) it is largely responsible for what is happening in Colombia today. They handed themselves over to Petro at the hands of Carlos Ramón González, they received the Ministry for the Regions, Sena, Icetex and DNI, the vast majority have been accomplices for a jar of jam, they betrayed the country”.
