Vladimir Fernández, then legal secretary of the government of President Gustavo Petro, had a mission: to be elected magistrate of the Constitutional Court. For that reason, by October 2023, he sought to his Cabinet partner Sandra Ortiz, who at that time was the presidential counselor for the regions.
There, what is now a new corruption chapter, linked to the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), which calls into question the legitimacy of Fernández’s election in the Plenary of the Senate, in October 2023, and the image of the highest court of justice in Colombia.
The facts were known within the framework of Sandra Ortiz’s statements in her process of collaboration in the Prosecutor’s Office, which strangely does not advance in her case, despite the fact that the former councilor provided detailed information that compromises Vladimir Fernández, Iván Name, then president of the Senate, and Carlos Ramón González, who was the director of the Danpre.
Sandra Ortiz, as Gustavo Petro’s government official, was a key piece in the movement of bribery millionaires that were given to Iván Name. According to the investigations, it would have been about 3,000 million pesos that arrived through Ortiz.
What is now discovered is that these resources went to Name pockets for their management to expedite the choice of the magistrate vacancy of the Constitutional Court, which Vladimir Fernández aspired.
As Ortiz told the Prosecutor’s Office, breakfast took a day after Name received the first payment of the UNGRD for 1.5 billion pesos, money that would have had a double objective: to help in the process of social reforms and include in the order of the day the election for magistrate of the Constitutional Court.
Thanks to that alleged intermediation of Sandra Ortiz with Iván Name, the then legal secretary of the Presidency of the Republic was greatly grateful. This was evidenced in the messages they exchanged after October 13, 2023.
That day, according to chats known by WEEKexchanged past messages 8 in the morning: “Leaving for the meeting. We are waiting for you,” Ortiz writes according to the tests. To which Fernández replies: “Here I am waiting.” Sandra asks where he is and he replies that in Name’s office.
The next conversation occurs about 1:41 in the afternoon of that same day, when Ortiz sends Vladimir Fernández a document that says “order of October 17, 2023”, to which the legal secretary responds with a blunt: “Thank you, my queen.”
On October 17, 2023 he thank him again, once the plenary of the Senate of the Republic chose him as magistrate of the Constitutional Court, replacing Judge Alejandro Linares Cantillo. The election took place around 5 in the afternoon and the message arrived at 8:41 at night.
“Beautiful Sandrita, thanks for all your support, really. I owe you,” Fernández wrote, once he had achieved his goal of being chosen as magistrate of the Constitutional Court, where there is a maximum alert following the evidence revealed by WEEK.
In the Constitutional Court, Vladimir Fernández, more than a magistrate, has acted as a Petro lawyer, indicated sources close to the high court. The issue was evidenced in the last week, when he made the decision to ask the High Court to suspend the investigation of the National Electoral Council (CNE) on the alleged irregular financing of Gustavo Petro’s presidential campaign.
