The account @Impacto24_7 published a message on X, Facebook and TikTok in which it states that the
“URGENT | The insatiable corruption of the Government of Change also reached Chocó. Once Guajira was looted, the Comptroller’s Office reported the disappearance of more than 100 BILLION pesos for Chocó aqueduct projects. Why will they only steal from the vulnerable population that trusted them? Give your opinion” (sic), says the publication made on June 1, which is accompanied by a photo of Petro hugging a black woman and another of three black children next to a wooden house.
However, what they claim is false. The royal complaint is related to the aqueduct projects that correspond to the ‘All for the Pacific’ program, which began its execution in 2011 and ended in September 2022, when Petro had only been in the Presidency for a month. The statement even details some facts, but these correspond to previous administrations.
We have verified @Impacto24_7, which is identified as a supposed news account, several times for spreading disinformation, especially against the government of Gustavo Petro (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). We have even mentioned it in the investigations “Imposter media in 8F: from the rescue in a helicopter to the alleged political affiliation of magistrates.”
Between June 1 and 11, the publication of @Impacto 24_7 was also spread by Facebook user Juan Alvaro Cortés in the groups FUDRA- rapid deployment force, HISTORICAL PACT: PETRO, NO MAS PARO and Soy Lancero de Colombia, while that the user Siricundino Monte shared it in the group EL END DEL SOCIALISM official group.
In the misinformation they mention the looting of La Guajira, referring to the network of corruption that began with the contracting with alleged cost overruns of 40 tank trucks from the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) for the supply of drinking water in La Guajira, which involves Petro government officials such as the former director of that entity, Olmedo López.
Projects of the ‘All for the Pacific’ program
We did a Google search with the phrase in the publication and found that it corresponds to a complaint published at the end of May 2024 by the Comptroller General of the Republic, registered by media such as El Nuevo Siglo, Noticias RCN, Infobae and El Tiempo. Likewise, this misinformation was verified by our colleagues at AFP Factual and they classified it as false.
According to the statement from the Comptroller’s Office, the more than 100,000 million pesos that would have “disappeared” from aqueduct projects in Chocó, correspond to the ‘All for the Pacific’ program, started on March 1, 2011, with financing of $103,109,422,283 contributed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and the Ministry of Housing.
Within the framework of this program, according to the Comptroller’s Office, contract 015 of 2016 was signed with the Obras Chocó Consortium for $42,185,639,387 for the construction of six aqueducts, but only one is currently operating. Four other projects that were completed in 2017 and 2021 are not working due to structural failures in pump houses, storage tanks and distribution networks.
Information about the program is found on the Ministry of Housing website and it says that it ended on July 28, 2017. However, a 2022 report from the Water and Sanitation Cooperation Fund of the Kingdom of Spain, which contributed 70% of resources, points out that the ‘All for the Pacific’ program ended in September of that year and they admit that it had difficulties of different kinds, “so some projects were left pending to be completed.”
“This made it impossible to achieve all the expected objectives, but it has been possible to launch the aqueduct systems planned in Nuquí and Bahía Solano, and to complete the works in the municipalities of Atrato, Tadó, Capurganá and Acandí,” the fund added.
That is to say, these projects were executed and completed during the governments of former presidents Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) and Iván Duque (2018-2022), taking into account that Gustavo Petro assumed the Presidency of the Republic in August 2022.
With this evidence, at Colombiacheck we classify as false the publications in which they claim that the Comptroller’s Office denounced that 100,000 million pesos for aqueduct projects in Chocó were “disappeared” during the Petro government. These resources were allocated to the projects of the ‘All for the Pacific’ program, which began its execution in 2011 and ended in September 2022, when Petro had only been assuming the Presidency for a month. The facts detailed by the control entity correspond to the Santos and Duque administrations.
