The mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez, revealed this Monday a unpublished testimony in which a citizen reported having witnessed how the Afinia management, the EPM subsidiary on the Colombian Caribbean coast, would have been allegedly used to set up a corrupt network that would have bled their coffers dry.
Also read: Federico Gutiérrez denounces that Quintero had delivered Afinia, a subsidiary of EPM, for $8 million dollars
Although for now said testimony is in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office, which must delve deeper into the case, several of the details of said testimony have cast a pall of doubt on multiple politicians and former officialsin what would be one of the most serious cases of alleged corruption in the recent history of the EPM Group.
In a press conference held this Monday morning, Gutiérrez revealed some general details of the testimony that came into the hands of the district government, according to which everything would have started in a restaurant located in the El Poblado sector.
In that place, located on Avenida Las Palmas with Transversal Inferior, politicians would have sat down accompanied by a Venezuelan business couplea former secretary of the Mayor’s Office and even a businessman splashed in the case of the Bogotá hiring carousel.
Although the names of all the participants were not revealed, this newspaper was able to learn that, according to what was expressed by the witness, the political figure who would be in the shadow of this negotiation would be the former congressman from Antioquia. William Ortega who, for his part, denies these allegations.
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Along with Ortega, according to this version, two businessmen known as Juan Biord Pereda and Eduardo Rodríguez Hernández, better known as “Lalo”; These last two already mentioned as members of an alleged group of businessmen who had arrived in the capital of Antioquia to replicate a modus operandi which had already occurred in the Bogotá contracting cartel.
Two other names that were mentioned in that testimony would be the former Secretary of Government, Esteban Restrepo –today also questioned for allegedly being one of the politicians who made lobby in the National Risk Management Unit -, and the controversial businessman Emilio Tapiawho continues to be held in prison.
At that meeting, said witness asserted that mechanisms to direct contracts until the collection of bribes from those who were signed.
“A citizen who witnessed the possible network of corruption that affected Afinia told me in recent days ‘the management and business of Afinia They were sold illegally by Daniel Quintero to a questioned former congressman for a value of 8 million dollars‘” Gutiérrez said.
In addition to that initial meeting, the mayor pointed out that the information indicated that meetings would also have been held in Medellín and Barranquilla clubsin which, apparently, these movements would have been planned, which would allegedly have been put into practice by the former manager of Afinia Javier Lastra and with the approval of the former general manager Jorge Andrés Carrillowho would have given his approval for the departure of the former manager Blanca Liliana Ruiz and the arrival of Lastra.
Keep reading: What to do so that Afinia does not end up dragging EPM down with its bad luck?
“Why, if Afinia had been improving indicators and quality of service by 2021, Under what criteria did they change a professional female EPM manager with great technical experience to appoint another? Well, we are finding the answer. The technical criterion, apparently, it was 8 million dollars“Gutiérrez said this Monday.
When asked about this topic, it is worth remembering that both Ballast like the former congressman Ortegathey assured not having participated in an operation of this typestating that they are unaware of the information revealed by Gutiérrez, which has already been officially delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office since the past May 2.
“Federico Gutiérrez mudslides me based on versions of a mysterious witness who claims that he filed a complaint a year and a half ago with the Prosecutor’s Office. Nobody conditioned my appointment at Afinia and my management was developed based on good practices“, Lastra defended himself in a tweet published on Twitter, which he sent to EL COLOMBIANO after being consulted for an interview to which he did not respond.
In a very different tone, the former congressman William Ortega did claim to have participated between 2021 and 2022 in a meeting held at the Unión Club in which he would have met Lastra, but indicated that it would have no political impact in Afinia.
“About two years ago, a businessman friend from here in Medellín asked me if I would accept him a little lunch. I told him that he had no problem and we went to lunch at Club Unión. A man, Gustavo Pérez, a known drug trafficker, arrived at that meeting, who was extradited with Elsa Noguera’s husband. I didn’t even know who he was, but the friend invited me to lunch and took him there,” Ortega said.
“[en la reunión] he told me that Why didn’t you help him appoint a friend of his?They didn’t even introduce it to me. There was another man there that I didn’t know either, which was Javier Lastra. The man even ordered me to offer some money to me and I told him that It had absolutely nothing to do with it, that I did not vote for Daniel Quintero, that I am not on his team“added the former congressman
For his part, former mayor Gutiérrez urged the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate in depth the testimony that reached the Mayor’s Office and indicated that he did not see it logical that, if an operation of this type had not occurred, the millionaire resources that EPM has been investing in its subsidiary since 2021, which would already exceed $2 billion, have not yet translated into returns and, on the contrary, continue to produce losses.
“The serious financial situation that Afinia is going through is explained by the review of the indicators during the previous administration, which show million-dollar investments made by the company, which does not compare with the profits that should have been received, but on the contrary the loss increased, gaining certainty to what was said by the witness, since this financial situation is only explained with cost overruns”Gutiérrez added.
