Investigative Signal reveals a hidden file that details the loss of a war arsenal in the Urabá Police, from where more than half a million cartridges disappeared in 2019 and ended up in the hands of the Gulf Clan. Five colonels are involved in the investigation. The Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, said that they are carrying out inspections in the armories in different regions of the country.
By: Investigative Signal, an alliance between RAYA Magazine and Signal Colombia
On April 30, President Gustavo Petro denounced what appears to be a modus operandi within the State Forces: the loss of ammunition and explosives from the Army and Police armouries, an arsenal of war that ends up in the hands of the illegal armed groups that then shoot at civilians and uniformed men who fight them in the mountains and in the towns.
“The only way to explain this type of shortage is that networks made up of people from the Military Forces and civilians dedicated to a massive arms trade have existed for a long time, using the legal weapons of the Colombian state. The destiny would be its claimants, in my opinion, the armed groups in Colombia. The explosives with which the checkpoints on the Medellín Bogotá highway were blown up a few months ago came from Tolemaida,” said President Petro, speaking of an Army report where more than 124,000 cartridges and more than 2,200 hand grenades were lost.
Investigative Signal reveals a hidden file that details the loss of another war arsenal, this time in the Urabá Police, from where more than 633,000 cartridges for 9-millimeter pistols, 7.62-millimeter cartridges for machine guns, 38-millimeter revolver cartridges, one kilometer disappeared. detonating cord, hand grenades, among others. It is certain that, according to a technical report from the National Police Inspection, part of the cartridges ended up in the hands of the Gulf Clan in that land, Urabá, also known as the cradle of this criminal group.
A similar case, but in the Army, was reported in April of last year. This is what Sergeant Carlos Mario Gómez did, speaking about the modus and the mafia in Urabá with CAMBIO magazine. “There is a network here. There is a criminal network, there is a mafia. There is a mafia… And that network, believe me, a non-commissioned officer, nor a soldier, nor a civilian has how to direct or protect it. There are high levels of the institution that really have that network and that really have the institution corrupted. I believe that they are serving as a center and suppliers of this war material, which belongs to the Ministry of Defense, with which they are killing our own men and also the civilian population,” he warned.
The Clan del Golfo, once known as the Urabeños, were born from the dissidents of the peace process with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that is, they are the paramilitary descendants of Carlos Castaño. That region of Urabá is strategic for this drug trafficking group, as it offers access to the Pacific and Caribbean coasts from the departments of Antioquia and Chocó. Precisely, this region is the one dominated by the Clan del Golfo, which has been accused of having links with the Public Force, mainly with the Police. In fact, before 2019 when their top boss, alias Otoniel, was captured, then some police officers conspired with paramilitaries from this clan to assassinate the commander of the Segovia Police, Antioquia, Lieutenant Andrés Osorio, who had dealt them accurate blows. Right there, its then mayor Didier Osorio denounced this link and asked that all the uniformed officers who were assigned to guard and guard that region be relieved.
Five years ago, in 2019, Military Criminal Court 167 of Urabá ordered an inspection of the Police of that region to try to locate a 5.56 millimeter caliber Galil rifle (serial 03309299). The weapon was reported lost in February 2019 by the deputy police commissioner in charge of the weapon. Even though the weapon was missing, the Urabá police officers recorded at least three false maintenance in official documents and tried to legalize lost ammunition by falsifying polygon forms. The signature on the left is fake and the one on the right is the original. The researchers did graphology tests.
The military criminal justice investigators who tracked the loss of the ammunition and explosives, at the same time were in charge of recovering the war material that was seized from the members of the Gulf Clan killed in combat with the Army when the Operation Agamemnon, which was described as historic and the beginning of the end of the Gulf Clan. This is what President Iván Duque said during his speech to inform the country of the capture of alias Otoniel precisely in that region of Urabá. However, the reality has been different and the expansion of that clan continues.
These investigators then compared the weapons and especially the ammunition, obtaining as a result that they were the same bullets manufactured by the Military Industry of the Colombian State, known as Indumil. Proof of this were the serial numbers of the cartridges analyzed.
During the fighting, twenty members of the Gulf Clan killed in Operation Agamemnon carried Italian and American weapons with more than 10,000 Indumil cartridges. Only in Víctor Manuel Peña Durán, killed in Necoclí (Antioquia), in November 2016, investigators found more than 8,500 9-millimeter pistol cartridges manufactured by Indumil, some of which were those that had disappeared from the Urabá Police cabinet. .
In the judicial case so far, nine officers are linked, among them, five Police colonels currently on active duty for the crime of embezzlement for appropriation of State property. Investigative Signal found that this file is in the hands of the ordinary justice system, that is, the Medellín Prosecutor’s Office. However, to date there is no significant progress in what appears to be a modus operandi in Army battalions and Police stations in different regions of the country.
Investigative Signal consulted the Minister of Defense about the investigations being carried out into the loss of ammunition and war material that was in the possession of the Army and the Police. This is how Iván Velásquez responded: “There has been progress in other inspections, in other magazines. What I can say is that the investigations continue. Since the internal actions of the Military Forces, some decisions have been made to separate some members… The preponderant action of the Gulf Clan in Urabá would lead to the assumption that the ammunition reaches the Gulf Clan,” he pointed out.
