This Wednesday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office submitted a request to the Bogotá Court to hold indictment hearings against former Ministers Ricardo Bonilla, Secretary of the Treasury, and Luis Fernando Velasco, Secretary of the Interior, for their alleged participation in the corruption conspiracy of the National Risk Management Unit, or UNGRD. The Public Ministry will also request that former officials of President Gustavo Petro be sent to prison on remand and will charge them with the crimes of aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime, undue interest in the execution of contracts and bribery in a bid or offer.
The prosecution considers Bonilla and Velasco to be a danger to society and will argue that it has sufficient evidence to prove their involvement in a corruption network in which UNGRD resources were diverted to members of Congress, corporations and other participants. The announcement by the Attorney General’s Office comes after the former director of the entity, Olmedo Lopez, his deputy, Snyder Pinilla, and the advisor to the Ministry of Finance, María Alejandra Benavides, admitted that the former ministers ordered Lopez to provide benefits to six members of Congress from the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Public Credit so that they could endorse the operations provided by the Ministry of Finance. In return, part of the resources approved by the Committee were directed by UNGRD to previously agreed upon third parties.
The prosecution had already announced in June that it would bring charges against Bonilla for his knowledge of the “alleged criminal activity” of the former minister, who was very close to President Petro and who resigned in December 2024 to address the accusations outside the government. His lawyer, Mauricio Bava, spoke about this accusation, indicating that he was collecting evidence proving that Bonilla had not committed crimes. He confirmed in an interview with W Radio that the case of the former Minister of Finance “is not a case in which bags containing money were accused, and it is not a case in which contracts were concluded and commissions were supposedly agreed upon, or according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The case of Ricardo Bonilla is another case and will be determined by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”
The Attorney General’s Office accuses Velasco of ordering the channeling of UNGRD contracts, worth about 35,000 million pesos, to benefit Senator Julio Elias Chagüy, of the U Party, whom the Attorney General’s Office refers to as a beneficiary of the corruption network. According to the testimony of Lopez and Pinilla, Chagüy was appointed spokesman for a group of congressmen to whom public resources were distributed in exchange for supporting government projects in the legislature. This resulted in multi-million dollar contracts in the municipality of Sahagún, Cordoba.
Bonilla and Velasco are not the only former Petro government officials involved in the scandal. In addition to them, Lopez and Pinilla, the only one convicted at the moment, and Sandra Ortiz, former presidential advisor to the regions, were accused of participating. In addition, Carlos Ramon Gonzalez, former director of the Administrative Department of the President and the Directorate of National Intelligence, remains at large, and the Attorney General’s Office has charged him with crimes of bribery, embezzlement by means of appropriation for the benefit of third parties, and money laundering for allegedly ordering the distribution of contracts worth 70,000 million pesos to obtain legislative support. Cesar Manrique, former Director of the Administrative Department of the Public Service, is also still at large, accused of diverting resources due to an agreement between UNGRD and the National Land Agency, as well as participating in meetings in which the award of contracts and distribution of resources were determined. The latter two remain at large.