The Supreme Court of Justice announced on Thursday that it will try former senator and former Congress president Arturo Char on charges of one of the largest vote-buying schemes recorded in Colombia in the past decade. The investigation chamber accuses him of crimes of conspiracy to commit a crime and voter corruption, which was exacerbated by his alleged participation in a smuggling operation. CVote buying in the province of Atlantico for the 2018 parliamentary elections. The issue reached the heart of the powerful Char family, which has deep influence in the Colombian Caribbean. Alejandro Char, Arturo’s brother, is the current mayor of Barranquilla.
The case in which Arturo Schar, a congressman for the right-wing Radical Change Party, is being investigated, occurred in October 2017 and during the months preceding the Republican congressional elections in March 2018. According to the Supreme Court, the operation “went beyond a simple political agreement” and crimes were committed against the mechanisms of democratic participation by buying votes for three candidates: Schar himself for the Senate; Lilibeth Linas Delgado to the House of Representatives, and Aida Merlano Rebolledo also to the Senate. The latter was actually convicted of the same events and became the main witness in the investigation. In fact, the center of the complex operation, which involved a network of credentialed vote-buying people, was Merlano’s campaign headquarters, known as the “White House.”
Due to this investigation, Schar resigned from his Senate seat in February 2023 and then left the country to settle in the United States. In September of that year, the Supreme Court issued an international arrest warrant for him, leading to the politician’s return to Colombia and his arrest as soon as he set foot at Barranquilla airport. However, in January 2024, a Santa Marta judge ordered his release due to expiration of the term, after his defense filed an appeal of the ruling. Habeas corpus order. He has remained free since then.
Politician Barranquilla has pleaded not guilty. He confirmed that his transfer to the United States was “purely family reasons,” and that when he did so there was no arrest warrant against him. Aida Merlano accused Arturo and other members of the Char family of orchestrating the cinematic escape in which she evaded authorities in 2019 by jumping rope from a dental clinic in Bogotá to a motorcycle where a man disguised as a resident was waiting. She was later arrested and sentenced.
The political life of Arturo Char (58 years old) extends for nearly two decades, since he entered Congress for the first time in 2006, and inherited the seat from his father, Fouad Char. He remained in that chair until 2010, and four years later, in 2014, he returned to occupy it and remained in it until his resignation in 2023. In the period 2020-2021, he became President of Congress. His family has politically controlled the government of Atlantico and the Barranquilla mayor’s office for nearly two decades, a city where his brother Alejandro – the current mayor – is widely popular. The family clan has always had the support of Cambio Radical, whose natural leader, German Vargas Lleras, is today among the candidates for the presidency of Colombia.