A luxurious jet black car and a blue and black high-displacement BMW motorcycle were two of the 24 assets worth $3,000 million that went into forfeiture in an operation that the Prosecutor’s Office announced last Friday against an alleged corrupt network that would have operated around the Medellín Mayor’s Office during the Daniel Quintero period. And it turns out that in a search it can be seen that the owners of those two vehicles would have communicating vessels with Miguel Quintero, the former president’s older brother.
Read here: Assets worth more than $3,000 million are seized from former senior Quintero officials due to the Parque de las Aguas scandal
As revealed by the El Armadillo portal, the two vehicles are listed in the name of Comercializadora JPino SAS, which has been mentioned as the recipient of contracts handed out by hand by the Aburrá Valley Metropolitan Area (Amva) for almost $2.5 billion for the supply of inputs for maintenance in the Parque de las Aguas and using Metroparques as an intermediary.
The strange thing is that it was a fabric marketer created in 2019—a few months before the Quintero administration inaugurated—and whose corporate purpose was suddenly changed so that it could do anything. Behind her would be Juan Alexander Pino, who according to the Prosecutor’s Office would also have influence in the management of Structures Zafiro, another of the companies involved in the same legal mess.
It is worth remembering that the director of the Metropolitan Area at the time the events for which the authorities are investigating occurred was Juan David Palacio, who began his career in the public sector at a very young age working in the support unit for Miguel Quintero when He was a councilor of Medellín, and considered his signature. What’s more, in political circles it is considered certain that the mayor’s brother was the real power behind the power in that entity.
To complete, there are testimonies that the former mayor’s older brother frequently went to Parque de Las Aguas and not exactly to swim, “he seemed to have an office there.” The same sources claim that he is very close to the former Metroparques managers Jorge Enrique Liévano and María Eugenia Domínguez, also linked to the case for allegedly having endorsed cost overruns and lack of technical rigor.
Another element that may or may not be coincidental is that precisely the 2022 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon, with license plate LRX785, seized by the authorities last week, would be the same one that appears in social media publications in which a woman appears to repair it unsuccessfully. and he says that he doesn’t know about cars but he does know about cold cuts, at the same time that he invites you to visit the Capital Antioqueña restaurant. The woman is Alejandra Santamaría, Pino’s partner and also a representative of Jupisan, the company that appears as the owner of the aforementioned food establishment.
Long before the entire alleged web of corruption around entities such as the Area and Metroparques became known, and when there was talk of alleged deals with goods and public procurement with the participation of Miguel Quintero, the IFM Noticias portal wondered if there was any relationship between this with Capital Antioqueña, because on several occasions he promoted it.
EL COLOMBIANO verified and indeed on Quintero’s Facebook account, in the midst of the comments defending the decision made by the then Mayor’s Office – that of his brother – to order the confinement of the population in their homes in order to stop the ravages of covid-19, a publication from April 20, 2020 appears with the 40% discount that Capital Antioqueña was granting on its typical menus and then, on January 29, 2021 there is another post in which Miguel Quintero invites you to put together a “perfect trio” to take advantage of the promotion of three hamburgers for $45,000 in that same location located in the second park of Laureles.
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In addition, Juan Pino appears to have an apartment near the Tricentenario neighborhood, the same one where the former mayor and his brothers Miguel and Juan David boast of having grown up. But Liévano, the former manager of Metroparques, would also have resided in that neighborhood in the north of Medellín. Coincidence?
This newspaper contacted JPino and Capital Antioqueña to find out their version, but on the first occasion they did not answer and on the second they agreed that Mrs. Santamaría would return the call; However, at the close of this edition they had not done so and did not respond again.
Among the assets that are currently in the possession of the Prosecutor’s Office, in addition to the luxury car and motorcycle, there are six other vehicles, four rural properties and three companies. These are located in the municipalities of Medellín, Girardota, Copacabana, Marinilla and Urrao.
When investigating official databases, this newspaper found that Alejandra Santamaría owns a property registered in her name in the Bellavista neighborhood of Marinilla (Eastern Antioquia), while JPino appears with another property in the urban area of Urrao (Southwest). , so these would be part of the authorities’ seizures.
This is how they would have operated
In the presentation of the case, the sectional director of the Medellín Prosecutor’s Office, Yira Milena Amado, explained that “according to the investigation carried out by a prosecutor from the Medellín Crimes Against the Public Administration Unit, between May 2020 and December 2022, the Metropolitan Area would have signed three inter-administrative contracts to deliver to Metroparques the total sum of $17,450 million.”
The modality of contracts and inter-administrative agreements was widely used in the Quintero administration to avoid the state contracting requirements defined in Law 80, in which the holding of public tender-type competitions is proposed as a general rule, and the use of the figure of direct hiring only exceptionally.
In this way, an entity attached to the Mayor’s Office contracted the administration of resources to acquire goods and services or to execute works with one of the companies of the district conglomerate and this in turn could subcontract with private companies, without many limits. In this way, not only were there cost overruns, but the power of control of the entities that have that mission was lost.
This is how, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Metropolitan Area would have later transferred resources for $4.5 billion through contracts that were awarded directly, without bidding, to Comercializadora Jpino SAS, Soluciones SAS and Structures Zafiro SAS.
Look here: The letters that the Prosecutor’s Office revealed against five bishops of former mayor Daniel Quintero
The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating alleged cartelization as well as possible cost overruns that would lead to misappropriation of public resources.
This, however, represents only a small part of the complaints for alleged questionable management of the resources of the Aburrá Valley Metropolitan Area.
This entity manages an annual budget close to $600,000 million and in the period of Juan David Palacio almost all of it was contracted without bidding.
In fact, even the Transparency office of the Casa de Nariño itself received a complaint about contracts that were awarded without opening a competition between 2020 and 2022 with the non-profit entities Tenarco, Arca, Cartama, Acopi and Fundaeventos, and that compromised resources for more than $32,000 million.
Last April, the new director, Paula Andrea Palacios, pointed out at least 13 serious irregularities that would have been committed during the period of her predecessor.
One of the most flagrant mentioned was the administrative reform that increased charges to instil people close to the bishops of former mayor Quintero.
Metroparques is another of the District entities that would have been most permeated by corruption. In September of last year, the Todos por Medellín oversight office revealed the existence of an alleged cartel of 22 companies that would have monopolized contracts for more than $120,000 million in Metroparques, with a style very similar to that used by former mayor Samuel Moreno Rojas in Bogotá.
“Here, unlike cartelization, which normally occurs in the private sector to deceive officials, there would be a tacit agreement between public servants and contractors,” stressed at the time the director of Todos por Medellín, Piedad Restrepo, who spoke not from several posters but from a single one, because it would obey the same mechanism, with responsibility of officials and would have been only a sample of what was happening in the entire district administration.
