Rodolfo Palomino, Colombia’s police chief between 2013 and 2016, turned himself in to justice on Monday to serve a seven-year prison sentence. He commented: “I have always respected and adhered to the rulings of justice, even if I did not share them (…). I am overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness over the injustice.”
Sonia Velasquez, a judicial official who was under pressure from Palomino, recorded the meeting in which the events occurred. “I would like to impress upon you a proposal that I hope will not be classified as an inappropriate proposal. How about we leave that (arrest) in abeyance?” The general told him, according to a transcript included in the ruling by the Supreme Court. He later justified the request with references to the social status of businessman Luis Gonzalo Gallo: he explained that he was a “personal friend” of former President Andres Pastrana and the then head of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno. He added: “(His arrest) will have a very serious connotation.”
The recordings also show that Palomino identified Gallo, accused of expropriating the lands of a hundred families in Uraba and under special jurisdiction of peace (JEP), as a “good man.” When the prosecutor was asked to press it, the rancher was certainly innocent because he had received money from international charities for “the noblest causes.” “One would think that this person, if he could at any time have invested in any such property, would not have done so with a view to leaving anyone deprived of his property,” the aforementioned section concludes.
The Supreme Court rejected the former police director’s argument that he had not authorized the recording. “When the victim is part of the recorded conversation, his or her actions do not constitute unlawful interception,” he added. For the Supreme Court, there was no doubt that Palomino abused his power. He stressed that “this behavior cannot be understood as a neutral practice or relations between institutions, but rather as an act aimed at interfering in the independent functioning of the penal system through the prestige and authority of the position he holds.”
Long history
The former police director, who is remembered for the corporate propaganda phrase “Palomino, your friend on the road,” resigned from his position in 2016 after being accused of creating and launching a male prostitution ring called the “Ring Society.” He confirmed that he asked then-President Juan Manuel Santos to leave his position to defend himself and not harm the reputation of the institution he leads. “I am not guilty of the charges against me, I am innocent, and I am bringing to an end my 38-year career of service,” he said then, in a letter very similar to the one he sent on Monday.
Before leaving office, he was also accused of illegally surveilling and intercepting journalists and potentially illegally increasing his assets. Later, in 2021, the Attorney General’s Office disqualified him for 13 years after it was found that he had pressured one of his subordinates to alter testimony against him regarding workplace and sexual harassment. Now, he has become the second police director to be arrested, after José Guillermo Medina, who was convicted in the 1990s for illicit enrichment.