On December 18, 2025, Judge Aura Alexandra Rosero of the Supreme Court of Bogotá ordered the detention of former ministers Luis Fernando Velasco and Ricardo Bonilla for their alleged involvement in a corruption scheme within the National Disaster Risk Management Unit (Ungrd).
The decision, which responds to the seriousness of the crimes charged and the risk of former officials relapsing into contractual leadership practices, aims to prevent the continuity of corruption schemes that, according to the court, undermine the credibility of executive and legislative institutions.
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Judge Rosero emphasized in her decision that the level of deprivation of liberty is not based on a risk of absconding, but on the need to prevent the reform of corrupt networks. The court found the Attorney General’s request for house arrest to be inadmissible because it was a substitute measure that could only be assessed after determining the appropriateness of a prison sentence.
According to the judge, “this is not based on an imminent escape, but on the current need to avoid a renewed formulation or continuity in the practices of contract management and interference in relationships typical of corruption schemes of complex scale, risks that do not prevent the international expulsion of the defendant.”
Faced with the decision of the Supreme Court of Bogotá, the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, took to his social networks to question the verdict and defend the former Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla.
“I can’t criticize failures? Why put a professor, a doctor of economics, who has dedicated his entire life to teaching students, in prison?” “he wrote in his
“Just because this professor was finance minister in the Petro government and managed to reduce poverty in Colombia? Just because he hesitated to leave the country without paying Duque’s debts and triggering an economic crisis and Uribista blackmail?” he emphasized.
Given the circumstances, Petro asked the former senior official to use his economics knowledge to educate Colombian prisoners while he remains incarcerated. “I ask Professor Bonilla to set up economics courses for the prisoners of Colombia in the detention center where he is held. Justice always thrives and leaves hatred in its wake.”
And he added: “We already know that our judicial system, under pressure from authoritarian governments, imprisoned professors like Dr. Beltrán, searched for Orlando Fals Borda and then had to release them after years because they were innocent. We all know that the judicial system arrested three thousand young people who were protesting for the dignity of life in the last government and was pressured to call them and accuse them of terrorism? Three thousand young students? They were not terrorists, they are.” political prisoners.”
At the same time, he criticized the Colombian justice system, which he said does not take strong action against the real criminals in Colombia.
“But if, in the case of the right, the justice system does not send to prison those who are partners of the paramilitaries and who employed the murderers of Jaime Garzón as advisers and gave orders for operations in popular neighborhoods where the paramilitaries were.” Help the government make people disappear. Also with close relatives who export medicines to the USA. “We already know that the ministers of Odebrech and the Colombian genocide are not in prison,” the president said.
At the end of his message, he reiterated that Bonilla is innocent of the allegations for which he is being investigated and insisted on his contributions to the country.
“I know Bonilla’s neatness personally and I know what happened to him and how much pressure he endured to pay off the debts that Duque left us,” concluded Petro.
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