Three of the officials closest to President Gustavo Petro went public this week in a bitter fight that reveals the deep fissures plaguing the Colombian government a few months before its end. The director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency (DAPRE), Angie Rodríguez, and the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, attacked, insulted and denounced possible irregularities of the current director of the Risk and Disaster Management Unit (UNGRD), Carlos Carrillo, who came to power with the presidential mandate to protect the resources of the public entity with the most acute cases of corruption in recent years. The protest, which took place on social networks and in the media, is getting worse as the days go by and threatens to dismiss some of the actors involved. Petro has yet to make a public statement to end the conflict or support any side.
It all started Thursday morning, when Rodríguez called a press conference to denounce his partner Carrillo in front of dozens of journalists. The director of the Presidency, who in recent days had assumed that she would leave her post but who remained after a meeting with Petro, transmitted the complaints through the official channels of the Presidency and through the public media system, despite the fact that Carrillo is a faithful bishop of Petrism. Rodríguez’s criticisms focused on the alleged weak execution of some Adaptation Fund projects when he was led, as manager, by the director of the UNGRD. He also denounced alleged cost overruns and mismanagement of public resources. “His management is a total disgrace,” said the powerful Rodríguez, one of the people with the most direct access to the president.
Minister Benedetti supported it, with a strong message on his networks inviting citizens to take note of the complaints. “Angie Rodríguez, Secretary General of the Presidency, presents convincing evidence of mismanagement, negligence, inefficiency, staging and deception of the Carlos Carrillo Adaptation Fund. The complaints known today must be rigorously investigated,” the minister wrote.
Carrillo, who established himself as a public servant without scandals and capable of criticizing the president’s allies involved in corruption problems, defended himself: he assured him months before informing the authorities of the problems with the same contracts mentioned by Rodríguez. Carrillo also assured that the attacks came from a Fund official close to the Minister of the Interior. “The information presented today comes from the right arm of Katherin Rojas, placed there by Armando Benedetti, who held a month of leadership and whom I denounced for political politics within the Fund. Rojas has once again brought the Fund closer to political groups, in flagrant violation of the orders of President Petro,” Carrillo wrote. The official also assured that the complaints were intended to cause him “political harm, because he classified me as an enemy.”
In addition to the messages on the networks, Carrillo cited his own press conference. He responded to the accusations, assured that he would take legal action against Rodríguez and took advantage of the opportunity to attack Benedetti. According to the director of UNGRD, the awarding of the La Mojana contract, on November 13, 2024, ended with relatives of senator Julio Elías Vidal, brother and political heir of former senator Ñoño Elías, convicted of corruption in the famous Odebrecht affair, and former partner of Benedetti’s party. The objective of the contract would be, according to the complaints, to finance their next campaigns. “The ñoños have been, are and will be the political partners of Armando Benedetti,” Carrillo said.
The minister, who has been increasing the number of fights on his social networks for several days with opponents, officials and former collaborators of the Executive, has once again attacked his colleague from the Government. “Carrillo, you had my respect and I liked you, but after having had the audacity to lie like this about me with regard to the brother of Ñoño Elías, I now think of this: your mediocre story of a simple designer and embarrassed by it, could only foreshadow the vulgarity with which you now act under the appearance of a public official”, wrote the politician in charge on his networks. And he continued his attacks. He called him a “wandering fool” and accused him of being “false and incompetent.”
Behind the struggle, assures Carrillo, there is the control of a powerful entity that can grant hundreds of billions of pesos in contracts and numerous jobs, the government’s transaction currency with members of Congress in this period when many reforms are blocked in the Legislature, and particularly useful for politicians three months before the Congressional elections. “I confirm that they handed over the Adaptation Fund as a fort to the politicians. If these ‘revelations’ demonstrate anything, it is precisely that: we denounced in time how they had seized the Fund, and that is why they are reacting the way they are doing,” Carrillo said. In recent months, relatives of senators from the La U party, that of Elías and in which Benedetti served for more than a decade, and of Senator Bérénice Bedoya, of the ASI party and key vote of the VII Commission that discusses health reform, have arrived at the entity, which has an investment budget of 624 billion pesos. The national media, for example, denounced the appointment as deputy director of the entity of Johan Londoño, son-in-law of the senator, and of Russell Ramírez, Juan José Poveda, Joaquín Emilio Zapata and Jorge Enrique Bedoya, all linked to Bedoya’s party.
In the coming days, President Petro will have to decide who he believes in and make corresponding decisions.
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