Three days after Christopher Landau, US Undersecretary of State, ordered the cancellation of visas for a Colombian megacontractor and a Colombian congresswoman; to two Ecuadorian businessmen; to a Peruvian judge Already 12 Bolivians – including former magistrates, judges, former prosecutors, a police officer and a businessman – were arrested in at least one of the affected countries.
Around 1 a.m. last Thursday, Bolivia’s attorney general, Roger Mariaca, He was captured while getting off a domestic flight. And in parallel, 14 people were arrested, apparently linked to a network with links to drug trafficking and money laundering operations.
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The first alert
Meeting of the Shield of the Americas. Photo:Chancellery.
Christopher Landau, known as the ‘visa remover’, warned last week that the removal of visas is part of the commitments made with the countries that make up the so-called Shield of the Americas.
This is a kind of ‘club’ of governments that agree with that of Donald Trump on key issues such as the fight against narco-terrorist organizations and against corruption. In the Colombian case, those affected by the measure – which had already been applied in the 90s to the then president Ernesto Samper and, later, to generals and other officials investigated for corruption – It fell to the coastal megacontractor Euclides Torres and the senator of the Petro Government coalition Martha Peralta.
Torres, head of a ‘clan’ with million-dollar contracts in concessions for photo fines, public lighting, biometric authentication, diagnostic centers for technomechanical tests and even solar panels, has been accused of having financed in the shadows the Petro Presidente 2022-2026 campaign and to grow politically and financially in the shadow of the Historical Pact.
And as for Martha Peralta, the Supreme Court has been investigating her in an eventful file for his alleged participation in the looting of the National Disaster Risk Management Unit (UNGRD).
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Top of the list
President Abelardo De La Espriella. Photo:Taken from the Presidency and private archive.
Both cases, which seemed to have been left behind in Colombian justice, became relevant when the then candidate to the Presidency Abelardo De La Espriella mentioned a list of about 21 people whom he accused of being buying votes for the presidential elections.
And now in the Presidency, The president ordered the review of the issue of photo fines, tacitly alluding again to Torres.
Federal sources told EL TIEMPO that this mechanism, for some political pressure and for others judicial alerts, It has already spread to those close to Peralta and Torres. And it will have an almost immediate second phase.
The president himself assured that they can now climb to the so-called Clinton or Ofac list “to close the door to impunity and combat corruption.”
And the same federal source stated that, contrary to what has been speculated, it is not true that there is an upcoming decision to remove the 4 Colombians who entered since October 2025 from that blacklist: the current former president Gustavo Petro; his former first lady, Verónica Alcocer; his eldest son, Nicolás Petro Burgos; and his former minister Armando Benedetti.
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The robes
Cristina Lombana, appointed Secretary of Transparency of the Presidency. Photo:Private file
It is clear that Nicolás Petro, Armando Benedetti and the contractor Euclides Torres are united by the issue of allegations regarding the irregular financing of the Petro campaign. whose investigations in Colombia are advancing at half speed.
Indeed, While Torres and Benedetti deny any irregular conduct, the Petro Burgos case is already in the trial stage.
The Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO investigated and established that, in effect, Torres could go from the visa-free list to the ‘Ofac’ list despite the fact that he has been emphatic that his contributions to Petro occurred in pre-campaign times with the famous ‘P’ mega-event in Barranquilla.
As for Peralta, who also pleads innocent and who left to ask the United States for explanations for the decision, the message that the De La Espriella government sent is clear.
Judge Cristina Lombana, who had the Peralta process in her hands until a couple of months ago, has just been appointed as Secretary of Transparency of the Presidency, a designation that did not sit well with some of her detractors who, like her, are already about to end their terms as robes.
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The FBI visit
Federico Gutiérrez at FBI headquarters in Miami. Photo:Social networks.
Federal sources told the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO that, To define other actions in Colombia, a commission is going to travel to the country in mid-October to hear various testimonies.
“One of these is that of a former deputy minister of the Petro government. And he is wondering about the group that you have called ‘the Verónicas’ and that includes two foreigners,” said the same source, referring to people close to the former first lady.
And he also added that it is being reviewed the case of the looting of Medellín and its communicating vessels with the corruption scandals in Ecopetrol.
“The conduct of the son of a former Paisa politician is being reviewed, as well as that of a former Ecopetrol executive who has already hired a lawyer in the United States”he explained.
This last case has to do with the evidence that was transferred to the FBI in Miami the mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez.
Gutiérrez assured that he gave the FBI information about alleged front men and diversion of public resources during the Daniel Quintero administration. But also evidence of links to the scandals at Ecopetrol.
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‘Puppet government’
Former Minister of the Interior Armando Benedetti. Photo:Social networks.
Regarding the reactivated visa suspension mechanism, former President Petro, He assured that this is a persecution of his political movement.
“That is persecution, that is punished in the Rome Statute. It is a crime against humanity and is called like this: the systematic persecution of a population group with a political identity, and that is progressivism in Colombia and Latin America. “It is a persecution of the White House through the State Department.”said the former president.
And his daughter Sofía Petro responded to a Twitter in which Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Bolivia for the operation to capture its prosecutor.
“You scoundrels, shameless cynics. How are you going to say that to protect democracy you kidnap the attorney general of a sovereign nation? On top of that, you think we’re idiots. And the little group of puppets thatThey were presidents, silent and nodding of course,” reads the trill.
For now, the list of those without visas is completed by the secretary of the Communist Youth (Juco), the young Vivian Marín Carmona, who was removed after she went online saying that they were going to set the country on fire.
The shield of the Americas begins to gain strength.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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