In Pereira, the political scene is on fire with the arrest of the former mayor of that capital Carlos Alberto Maya and one of his closest officials in the exercise of executive power between 2020-2023. And not only because of Maya’s arrest, but because of the beginning of an investigation that the Supreme Court of Justice opened against senator and former mayor of Pereira Juan Pablo Gallo.
Gallo was mayor of Pereira between 2016-2019, suspended in October of that year by the Attorney General’s Office for improper participation in politics, as he was discovered openly supporting his mayoral candidate Carlos Alberto Maya. Later, Gallo was denounced for illicit enrichment, after buying, when he was mayor, a luxurious apartment in Pereira, which cost him $1,000 million. The prosecutor in the case recommended precluding the investigation on two occasions, but the judge in the case did not accept it. Now, because he is a senator of the Republic, the investigation reached the Supreme Court.
Gallo and Maya seem to have the same line, which will surely define justice, because finally Maya succeeded Gallo in power, and in Pereira everyone affirms that it was this one who elected that one, with the votes given by the contracts in the town hall.
An investigation was opened against Maya for the alleged crimes of ideological falsification in a public document, destruction, suppression or concealment of a public document, embezzlement by appropriation, contract without compliance with legal requirements and procedural fraud. The same facts are also being investigated, and he was captured in the same procedure, the former secretary of infrastructure of his administration Milton Hurtado García.
As reported yesterday by the Caracol radio station, “the Third Municipal Criminal Judge with Guarantees Control Function of Pereira, in charge of the case, legalized the search process carried out in the former president’s home, located in an exclusive sector of Cerritos, also the one carried out on Hurtado’s property, and a third carried out in the house of Maya’s lawyer. Likewise, the judge endorsed the capture process of both former officials, despite the fact that the former president’s defense tried to prevent it.”
Both Maya and Hurtado and three other former officials would be related to alleged acts of corruption found in the execution of the first phase of the controversial Avenida Los Colibríes work, a work with an initial value of $31,860 million, and which ended with additions worth $20,300 million, thus adding a total of $52,161 million.
The investigations of the Risaralda Sectional Prosecutor’s Office point to a possible patrimonial detriment of the order of $10 billion.
Another of those detained is José Alberto Rojas Prieto, legal representative of the Consortium that carried out the works.
In Armenia, a case of constraint
We must not forget that Juan Pablo Gallo obtained more than 11,000 votes in Quindío in the last elections, supported by former governor Roberto Jairo Jaramillo Cárdenas and the now representative to the Chamber Piedad Correal. At that point in the campaign, Gallo was denounced for political constraint in the city of Armenia, according to the radio station W. He indicated that On December 16, 2021, a meeting was held at the Las Palmas Bolera to promote the Senate and House of Representatives campaigns of Gallo, and Piedad Correal, respectively. And, according to that medium, in the chats the office secretaries of the Quindío Government demanded that contractors collect signatures for these candidates, be at events and share advertising to promote their campaigns.
