Former Chief of Staff of Petro Government to Defend Herself Against Attacks Based on Gender

In the midst of the scandal after the known audios of Armando Benedetti and their mentions to Laura SarabiaPresident Gustavo Petro and other national government officials, the now former chief of staff broke her silence three days after confirming her departure from the Casa de Nariño.

In a statement, the defense of the former official announced that, at the time of notifying her resignation, she warned of possible “malicious actions” from a person who, according to her, wanted to hinder the current administration. Likewise, she announced measures to defend herself against the attacks that she received from the former ambassador in Venezuela and that were evident in the audios revealed by Week on the night of Sunday June 4.

In this regard, the lawyer Jorge Mario Gómez announced that Sarabia “will defend himself against the outrageous and humiliating attacks to which she was subjected as a woman long ago by Armando Benedetti”.

“(…) It will go to each and every one of the calls of the justice and the control entities to give clarity and explanation about the facts of its competence and knowledge,” added the criminal lawyer in the statement published on the afternoon of Monday June 5. By the way, he sent a new accolade to President Gustavo Petro, who asked Benedetti to respond to the country and the Attorney General’s Office for what was mentioned in those audios.

In the 25 minutes of recording, the former senator of the U Party was harsh with the current investigation; She even assured him that thanks to him, she was able to obtain the position of Chief of Staff. He also called her “incapable” and insulted her with various profanities.

“I swear to you that you are naive and inexperience… Now I do understand why they are doing so badly in the Government, due to inexperience and ingenuity. And then I think you called my dad yesterday, to scare him about the legal thing. I mean, Laura, please Laura, you’re playing with professionals (…) If before you felt threatened, now it’s a threatening ass, and you tell me hijue$%& when ass do you want me to be there in Bogotá and when do you want ass start fighting or when do you want to fix your ass”.

“You are there for me, son$%&, for me! Or is it that someone was going to pass you the son$%& phone if you hadn’t worked with me. I would have left you alone to see what ass you were going to do,” Benedetti said against Sarabia in the leaked audios. She assured that the position of head of the Office was also chosen by Verónica Alcocer and not by her own merit, according to her resume.

The context of that fragment was Petro’s trill in which he announced the rescue of the four missing children after the plane crash in Guaviare at the beginning of May.

In that order, Armando Benedetti questioned the actions of the president, but also that of entities such as the Civil Aeronautics about the information delivered to the president related to that trill published on the afternoon of May 18 and which was deleted the following day.

“Laura, I know you don’t like being given advice, but I’m going to try to see it whenever I can. The president went out like crazy yesterday and played with a bunch of victims and such, for a bunch of four little kids, right? And it turns out that today it is clear that this is not the case. Then Aeronautics comes out, as if it were from another government of another country, screwing over the president. What he had to do (sic) was that the president or you, you, you should have left. You are a woman, you are a mother, do you understand me?”

Subsequently, he continued with his reproaches to the current one investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office for the shots against two of his former employees: “You should have gone out and said ‘Look, the Aeronautics says they found this from the plane’ The Aeronautics, like an appendix or something foreign to you, leaving the president crazy, more than what was left (. ..) EThis news should have been given by the president himself or by you, chief of staff, that you already know the country, that you are a woman, that you have a child, and you get hijue$%& with a pitying face to say ‘this happened and that’s it’. You control the damage there, it is not that you are going to remove the damage (…) Hey Laura, I never thought you were so silly… You keep saying that the position you are in has nothing to do with me, no one believes that”.