Surprise generated the capture in Bogotá of Carlos Alberto Maya López, former mayor of Pereira, for alleged corruption in the construction of a project between 2020 and 2023.
The judicial procedure was carried out by agents of the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) on the afternoon of Friday, June 21, in a renowned university located in the center of the Colombian capital. Along with Maya López, the former Secretary of Infrastructure, Milton Hurtado, was also captured in Pereira.
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The work that provoked the investigations of the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation is the execution of the first phase of Avenida Los Colibríes, which was left unfinished and generated cost overruns that exceeded $20,000 million.
This work had a special follow-up of the influencer White elephantrecognized for making public denunciations of works that are or are about to become a white elephant.
In statements delivered to Infobae Colombito, Elephant He assured that from the citizen project there was pressure on the current mayor of Pereira, Mauricio Salazar, to respond for the resources invested in said work and its prompt delivery.
In a post on Instagram, on March 12, 2024, the influencer He reported on his findings after his visit to that work: “Avenida los Colibrís in Pereira will become a new white elephant this March 15. This avenue, initially agreed upon for 32 billion for supposedly 6 lanes and 4km, suddenly raised its price to 52 thousand million, but yes, going down to 4 lanes and reducing its length to only 3km (sic),” he explained in the post.
“(…) the super calm contractor now demands 13 billion more, supposedly to prevent the work from becoming a White Elephant, because this Friday, when the delivery date is met, the work will not reach reach more than 60%, as I verified after my inspection (sic)”, he added.
According to Elephant“this work shows a lot the legacy of today’s Senator Juan Pablo Gallo, and his Chief César Gaviria” and the consequences of his two mayoralties, and added that, “I tell you that today I filed a guardianship, because the new Mayor forgot to respond to a request I made a month ago demanding to finish the road. (sic)”.
Even once the right to petition and protection procedures were carried out asking for explanations for the work, Elephant he would have been invited by Mayor Salazar for “the inauguration” of the white elephant.
“The mayor of Pereira invited the Elephantsupposedly at a white elephant inauguration and I didn’t answer him, because obviously the character is not a politician. He was even told that because he had not responded to an internal guardianship,” he stated, adding that, “the character was the one who put the most pressure on that case, why? Because the Prosecutor’s Office is not going to come out and say that due to the complaints of Elephant, but the pressure on Mayor Pereira was what led to the result we are seeing.”
For this reason, the content creator and citizen observer, who remains anonymous, emphasized the importance of monitoring the works and projects so that they do not end up as a white elephant.
“The most important thing is that how a citizen pressures a mayor so that the mayor is the one who files the criminal proceedings, because the municipality is the victim. We are used to seeing institutions as isolated, disjointed things, and that is not the case, it is the representation of a town, a municipality, a city and then the municipality of Pereira carries out the criminal pressures of the case,” he explained to this medium.
Lastly, he stressed that,Although it is difficult to recover the “money” that was not invested efficiently in the work of Avenida Los Colibríes, it does reflect the importance of citizen pressure on the leaders who are elected by popular election.
“It is difficult to recover the lost money, because they have put more than $60,000 million into that work, of which there is already talk of a detriment of $20,000 million. The message is that if we had carried out a correct oversight this would not happen. Supposedly, that’s what the Comptroller’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office are for, but they don’t serve a damn purpose, so if these entities did work in a preventive and not corrective manner, it would be a different story,” he concluded to this medium.
