Former presidential candidate and Senator elected by the political movement League of Anti-Corruption Rulers, during the session of the Congress of the Republic for the election of the judges of the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Photo: Mauricio Alvarado Lozada
The former presidential candidate and former mayor of Bucaramanga, Rodolfo Hernández Suárez was sentenced to 64 months in prison for the crime of undue interest in entering into contracts. This was determined by the tenth criminal judge of the Bucaramanga circuit who had already declared the politician guilty last March.
Today’s news is that, for having signed a million-dollar contract that benefited his son, Hernández must pay 5 years and three months in prison, a sentence that the judge will allow him to serve at home in prison, not only because it does not represent a risk to society, but also because of his age and his delicate state of health, since a few months ago he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
In addition to the prison sentence, the court fined the former candidate and he will have to pay 66.66 minimum wages, a little more than $86 million. Likewise, the ruling against him also includes an 80-month inability to hold public office.
This is the complete ruling:
The ruling against Hernández was recorded in a 40-page document in which the judge argued the reasons why he found the former presidential candidate guilty. What the Prosecutor’s Office managed to prove is that the former local president intervened so that consulting contract 096 of 2016 was awarded to the company Vitalogic RSU.
The contract between the company and the Bucaramanga Municipal Cleaning Company had as its objective the implementation of new technologies in the El Carrasco landfill. According to the investigating entity, Hernández’s son agreed on the distribution of commissions for the awarding of that contract to the company Vitalogic RSU.
The document, says the investigating entity, had the signatures of the advisor of the Bucaramanga Cleaning Company, Jorge Hernán Alarcón, and the Vitalogic contractor, Carlos Gutiérrez. “Before the bidding began, Mayor Hernández had already designated some ‘calaveras’ as he vulgarly calls them; That is, some people to prepare the bidding documents and it would be awarded to the company of their choice,” the file reads.
All of the above had one purpose: that Rodolfo Hernández’s son, Luis Carlos Hernández, would receive a payment of US$100 million, something that justice has not yet proven, since the case against the businessman remains firm. The former candidate’s defense announced that he will appeal the conviction and will now have five days to file it before the Superior Court of Bucaramanga.
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