It began as a private complaint by a magistrate of the Constitutional Court, and became a national scandal that reawakened the trauma of the attacks on the Supreme Court and the opposition during the Álvaro Uribe government. But now the opposition is from Uribe’s party, and the government is the president who was previously a victim of the chuzadas, Gustavo Petro.
As head of the intelligence agencies accused of carrying out illegal wiretaps, Petro dismissed the complaint by Judge Jorge Enrique Ibáñez and asked “to stop falling into the naivety that Nazi groups create.” The president added that the rumors seek to break the relations “of the government with other branches of the State” and affirmed that he has given the express order not to carry out wiretapping.
In several sectors of the high courts, which with a solid esprit de corps came out en masse to request that Ibáñez’s complaint be investigated, there has been a bitter taste about how the entire episode is being processed, which strains an already tense relationship with the government. It all started in the Constitutional Court.
Ibáñez takes his complaint to the president of the Court
On June 14, Jorge Enrique Ibáñez approached the current president of that Court, José Fernando Reyes, with the complaint that his phone was tapped by the Petro government.
The 64-year-old lawyer from Tunja has been the rapporteur of some of the most adverse decisions for the Petro government. Among them, the one that struck down the article that prohibited deducting royalties from income tax to oil companies, which gave the government’s tax authority nearly $3 billion a year.
Ibáñez is a conservative magistrate who began working at a printing house at the age of 11 and was elected city councillor at the age of 18. Later, studying law at the Universidad Javeriana, he recalls that he left politics when “Father Giraldo (famous in that law school) told me to decide whether I was going to study or be a politician”, and he decided on the former.
He worked at the Bank of the Republic for a decade, was a legal advisor during the Constituent Assembly, and after an outstanding career as a constitutionalist and administrativeist, he came to the Constitutional Court appointed by the Council of State in 2020.
The complaint that he was drunk, which he took to his colleague Reyes, is not the first he has made in his career. In 2019, when he was a lawyer for the arbitration court that ruled against Odebrecht and Grupo Aval in the lawsuit arising from the Ruta del Sol 2 contract, Ibáñez denounced monitoring and interceptions. But the investigations of the Prosecutor’s Office did not advance and the current magistrate was not convinced by the responses that he received at that time from intelligence agencies.
Now again, after an internal verification of which he has not given details, he went to Reyes with the suspicion that the government was intercepting him. Reyes decided to summon the attorney general and the other eight judges to an extraordinary meeting five days later.
But that same day Caracol Radio reported that a magistrate from one of the high courts, “whose identity is reserved,” had circulated a message from his WhatsApp denouncing interceptions.
“I allow myself to inform you that this phone and this chat have been illegally tapped by the State intelligence agencies,” said the message read by journalist Gustavo Gómez.
The meeting in the plenary hall with prosecutor Camargo
On Wednesday the 19th, the Attorney General, Luz Adriana Camargo, arrived at the Palace of Justice. At the meeting, Reyes officially delivered to Camargo a two-page letter written by Ibáñez in which there is a detailed complaint of the interceptions against him, three of his four assistant magistrates and his wife, Ileana. Melo.
With the letter in hand, the prosecutor asked if anyone, besides Ibáñez, had indications that they were being intercepted or followed illegally. There was silence.
In a press conference called by Judge Ibáñez, he himself related how his colleagues had no reason to consider that they were in the same situation. “Even so, many told the prosecutor that they would stop to check their equipment to see if they found any irregularities,” the magistrate said.
To date, no other magistrate of that Court has stated that they are subject to monitoring and interceptions. “It’s an Ibáñez thing,” a source who knew what was discussed in that full room told La Silla. Until now, only he has spoken in his personal capacity about the reported situation.
In the Plenary Chamber it was agreed that the issue would be handled with caution and with a low profile. “Reyes, as president, does not want a confrontation with the government,” a source with access to the Court told La Silla.
The prosecutor stated that she would be in charge of making available all the resources of the entity to carry out the investigation and that she would immediately forward the complaint to the Unit of Delegated Prosecutors of the Supreme Court of Justice, who are in charge of reviewing cases that involve gauged
The meeting was adjourned and the secrecy of the prosecutor’s visit lasted only two days. On Friday the 21st, after 9 pm, a press officer of the Court announced the following message through the press WhatsApp group: “We can inform you that the Plenary Chamber invited the Attorney General last Wednesday to ‘put present the situation.” Furthermore, the Court delegate said that “no statements will be made regarding the information.”
Ibáñez in the spotlight
The next day, the print edition of Semana magazine came out. “Chuzed Magistrates,” said the cover, accompanied by an image of a judge, with his back turned, in front of the Palace of Justice. The edition published the confidential letter that Judge Ibáñez had delivered to the president of the Court and the prosecutor Camargo.
Under the subject “irregular situation,” Ibáñez relates in the letter how “for several months, my communications, especially my cell phone, have been tapped and based on information that I have been able to gather from various sources, I have come to the conclusion that Unfortunately, this is due to operations by official intelligence bodies that are carried out without judicial authorization and outside the legal frameworks of the statutory intelligence and counterintelligence law.”
The leak was not well received within the court. “It has the magistrates very upset,” a person with direct knowledge of what is happening in the Court told La Silla. “It is one thing to ask for an investigation, as was done in the meeting, and quite another to say that the government was the one who wiretapped,” added the source, who asked to remain anonymous to give details of private conversations.
Indeed, in Semana the information in the letter was accompanied in the article by names indicated by sources to be behind the interceptions. He speaks of a “general of the republic who confirms in a reserved manner that these interceptions have indeed occurred.” Immediately afterwards he attributes them to Carlos Ramón González, director of the DNI and René Guarín, head of Technology and Information Systems at the Casa de Nariño. The Magazine note says that there was an attempt to contact Judge Ibáñez, but that he said that he would not comment on the issue.
Semana was the first media to obtain the leak of the letter and of which there were three copies: the one in the hands of Reyes, president of the Court, the one delivered to prosecutor Camargohttps://twitter.com/FiscaliaCol/status/1804567515361841516?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1804567515361841516%7Ctwgr%5Ee9d69e80be80e2efdd4693fef7bb60b3a251aad1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elcolombiano.com%2Fcolombia%2Ffiscal-luz-adriana-camargo-se-reunira-con-magistrado-jorge-enrique-ibanez-chuzadas-BN24839118 his leak for interfering in a confidential investigation, and Ibáñez.
According to what Judge Ibáñez told La Silla Vacía, “I have not made any approach to the media. They have called me and I have answered several things, but respecting the limits that exist in the Court. And I am not aware that there is any disagreement within the Court. From outside I hear solidarity with the Court and in general with the institutions.”
On Monday, after Ibáñez’s letter became known, a message of support from the presidents of the high courts was published. “The presidents of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, of the Supreme Court of Justice, of the Council of State and of the Constitutional Court, register with concern the events denounced by the vice president of the Constitutional Court, Jorge Enrique Ibáñez, related to alleged interceptions “says the letter signed by the four presidents in which they also request guarantees from the National Government so that the Prosecutor’s Office can advance the investigation.
Yesterday, Ibáñez spoke with Blu Radio and Caracol Radio about President Petro’s statements, in which he attributed the alleged attacks to the extreme right and denied that they came from his government. In both media he clarified that he does not consider himself a “victim” and that he is simply informing the competent authorities of facts that involve him.
While Ibáñez gave his statements to the media, Carlos Ramón González, director of the DNI, spoke with the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Gerson Chaverra, to discuss the issue of the tricks that are handled together with prosecutors delegated to the Corporation. Upon leaving, González declared that “the vast majority of versions about alleged interceptions are rumors.”
That statement was at 9:15 am. At 10:00 am, the press spokesperson of the Constitutional Court suddenly announced a press conference that Judge Ibáñez would give at 11:00 am at the Palace of Justice.
Ibáñez was waiting for journalists on the ninth floor of the Constitutional Court. But his answers took a marked turn. The magistrate did not speak of alleged culprits, as he had indicated in the letter. He did not say that he presumed that it was a play orchestrated by the DNI, nor that they were illegal interceptions. He even managed to talk about viruses that constantly generate failures in mobile phones and equipment, a thesis that he had not expressed until that moment.
In response to repeated questions about what evidence he had to make him feel fooled, he stated that “the ongoing investigation is confidential, therefore it is an obligation to maintain complete confidentiality about it.”
And so, he left the floor to prosecutor Camargo to decide whether there are any tricks and who would be doing them.
