Alvaro Uribe sentenced to 12 Years of House Arrest!
Bogotá, Aug 1 (EFE). –
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) was sentenced to 12 years of house arrest for procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings, according to the court ruling released Friday.
The document states that Judge Sandra Heredia, who will read the ruling at 2:00 pm local time, additionally decided to impose a fine of over 3.4 billion Colombian pesos (around 820,000 dollars) and disqualified him from holding public office for over eight years.
Uribe, 73, founder of the right-wing Democratic Center party, became on Monday the first former Colombian president to be criminally convicted.
However, his defense team has already announced that it will appeal the court’s decision before the Superior Court of Bogotá.
Case Background
The long-running case dates back to 2012, when Uribe was a senator, and sued left-wing senator Efraín Cepeda for alleged witness tampering, who at the time was preparing a congressional complaint against him for alleged links to paramilitarism.
Contrary to Uribe’s expectations, the Supreme Court did not open an investigation against the left-wing congressman but instead charged the former president with witness tampering.
The bribery charge relates to the alleged payment of bribes to former paramilitaries Carlos Enrique Vélez and Juan Guillermo Monsalve.
Monsalve assured that there was a whole strategy to approach him and convince him to testify against Cepeda.
The former president has insisted for years that the case against him is politically motivated and lacks evidence.
Uribe resigned from his senatorial seat in August 2020 so his case could be transferred to the ordinary justice system.
The prosecutor’s office argued there was no evidence to prosecute him, which was rejected by the judge. EFE csr/mcd
