In a 1,554-page document, the Supreme Court of Justice set out the facts for which it decided to continue the investigation against the former president. Álvaro Uribe, and impose an insurance measure for the alleged manipulation of testimonies.
EL TIEMPO knew that document with which the high court resolved Uribe’s legal situation as an alleged determiner of bribery and procedural fraud, which is being investigated.
In the file, the high court ensures that there is a reasonable inference of the former president’s responsibility in this case to reach witnesses such as ex-paramilitaries Juan Guillermo Monsalve and Carlos Enrique Vélez.
(Also read: Judge sends Diego Cadena, Álvaro Uribe’s lawyer, to jail).
This reasonable inference is important because, in order to order the insurance measure, the Supreme Court of Justice should have at least two serious indications for, at the time of resolving the legal situation, decide to continue the investigation and also order the insurance measure against Uribe.
The former president and his defense, led by Jaime Granados, have said that he never asked anyone to bribe any witnesses, “Nor did he give any instructions to get witnesses.” And so Diego Cadena, Uribe’s lawyer who visited the prisons and had contact with the ex-paramilitaries, has maintained that he has never informed Senator Uribe of what he calls humanitarian aid offered to witnesses.
According to the defense of the senator of the Democratic Center, he limited himself to requesting that the information received by the citizens be verified, to send it to the Court. The defense also maintains that Juan Guillermo Monsalve was visited by Cadena because he, through third parties, had stated that he wanted to retract what was said against Uribe. And about Vélez, he affirms that Uribe also did not give instructions so that offers were made to him because he himself had previously withdrawn before the Court.
(It may interest you: ‘Uribe did not ask that a witness be bribed’: his defense says).
When analyzing these facts, the document of the Supreme Court of Justice says that “the evidentiary examination sufficiently exposes his concurrence, warned as is the existence of punishable conduct that can and should be attributed to Senator Uribe Vélez.”
The evidentiary examination adequately exposes their attendance, warned as is the existence of punishable conduct that can and should be attributed to Senator Uribe Vélez
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Although the defense of the former president has insisted that he is innocent, that he never authorized or was aware of the payments and offers that the lawyer Diego Cadena was making to witnesses such as ex-paramilitaries Juan Guillermo Monsalve or Carlos Enrique Vélez to testify in favor of Uribe in Court, the high court thinks otherwise.
For the Court, Uribe “He acted intentionally, that is, with knowledge of the facts, awareness of the wrongfulness and the will to want its realization.” Thus, the Court says that the interceptions, testimonies, recordings, technical inspections of prisons, chats and other evidence yield “direct evidence of the participation of the congressman.”
(Also: Ex-president Uribe asks that his process be public).
The high court said that the request to retract that was made to Juan Guillermo Monsalve, who has linked Uribe Vélez with the formation of the paramilitaries in Antioquia and with the birth of the Bloque Metro, “came directly from Senator Álvaro Uribe.” Also, says the Court, the request made to the ex-for Carlos Enrique Vélez to declare in his favor and his brother Santiago Uribe -in trial for alleged links with the 12 Apostles and a homicide- would have come from Uribe.
In these cases, the high court assures, “the evidence evidence is abundant, clear, unequivocal and conclusive of its determining status of the punishable behaviors sighted “.
In the document, the Court also talks about the relationship between Uribe and the lawyer Diego Cadena, as well as Cadena’s assistant, Juan José Salazar. Today, both Cadena and Salazar face charges of bribery, and a judge agreed to send them to house arrest.
According to the high court, Uribe commissioned Cadena to collect these testimonies from former paramilitaries to take them to the Supreme Court of Justice, in the middle of an appeal that he was going to file against the decision on February 16, 2018, in which the high The court filed a complaint by Uribe against Cepeda and made copies against the former president for allegedly trying to manipulate witnesses against the senator from Polo.
“With these instructions and, in addition to that of bringing everything to the Court, Senator Uribe Vélez gave birth or reinforced in his decisions, not only by virtue of that contractual link, but by his ascendant authority, the idea of carrying out the criminal act, which was actually carried out by those induced as material perpetrators, “the document assures.
According to the former president’s defense, he never pressured witnesses and it was Monsalve himself who made them aware of his interest in retracting what he had said.
But the Court assures that, even though Uribe’s lawyers maintain that what they wanted to do when speaking with the ex-paramilitaries who were contacting them in the prisons was to search for the truth, and that is why he was “given the mandate to verify the information “To Diego Cadena, without bribes involved, what the evidence indicates is something else.
Why? For the Court, for example, a very striking fact is the way in which Cadena comes to “appear from management”, since its role was not to verify or corroborate information, rather, it has been shown that “insistently they were the ones who were looking for her by not very usual means”, with potential witnesses “contacting and convincing others”.
In each of the events analyzed in precedence there is evidence of their clear knowledge (…) and of their firm intention and will to carry them out through interposed persons
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According to the Court, there was a “laxity in the instruction regarding the way in which the statements would be obtained, the permission of the close and permanent treatment -which the Senator knew- of the lawyers with the witnesses and the collaboration or support in their judicial cases” .
The high court says that that instruction that Uribe gave his lawyer Cadena “was a mere and empty excuse used to cover up the manifestly illegal mission, to which, apparently and by what is established with support in the suasorios media, it was determined to carry out the lawyers. “An example of this, the magistrates say, is the clandestinity in which Cadena moved during his visits to the prisons .
All these indications, for the Court, show that Uribe had a personal interest from the moment the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered to investigate him, when his complaint against Cepeda was filed. The corporation says in its document that “he and only he” wanted to “dismantle, as it were, those testimonies against him that had him facing criminal proceedings.”
That conclusion, says the Investigation Chamber, can be reached, for example, by listening to the legal interceptions that exist in this investigation and which show that these events could not have occurred “without their consent, without their authorization.”
Even, the Court assures, after the process against him began, Uribe would have continued with his actions, “invoking the despicable argument of having heard rumors or comments of plots against him, coupled with the claim of lacking guarantees for the due exercise of the defense, “at which time the former president asked citizens to help him find information about false witnesses who wanted to affect him.
With all this, the Court reiterates that in this case Uribe can be charged with the crimes of bribery and procedural fraud as a fraud, since “without a doubt, in each of the events analyzed in precedence there is evidence of his clear knowledge of the awareness of the illegality and its firm intention and will to carry them out through interposed persons “.
JUSTICE.
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