Bogota. Nicolás Petro, the eldest son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, rejected on Tuesday the charges of money laundering and illicit enrichment charged by the Attorney General’s Office before a judge, in a process that could hit the president’s governability.
The president’s son was arrested on Saturday in the city of Barraquilla along with his ex-wife Daysuris del Carmen Vásquez, who in March claimed that two people accused of having ties to drug trafficking gave her former spouse cash to support the campaign presidential election of the current president without him being informed.
According to the complaint, Nicolás, a deputy in the assembly of the department of Atlántico, in northern Colombia, would have kept the money of the accused drug traffickers with the promise of including them in his father’s peace efforts, although the The president’s son denied the accusations.
“Your Judge, I do not accept the charges,” Petro’s 37-year-old son said at the charges hearing in Bogotá. By denying his responsibility, the defendant lost the opportunity to receive a reduction of up to 50 percent of the sentence.
Nicolás Petro could be sentenced to between 12 and 20 years in prison if convicted at trial, according to lawyers who are experts in criminal law. His ex-wife also did not accept the charges of money laundering and violation of personal data.
In a hearing that lasted more than three hours in its initial phase, prosecutor Mario Burgos assured that the president’s son “increased his assets unjustifiably” by buying properties valued at more than 1.6 billion Colombian pesos (410 thousand 400 dollars) when his salary as a deputy did not allow him to do so and that he also hid the transactions.
Petro, a 63-year-old economist nearing his first year as president, is seeking peace agreements with leftist guerrilla groups and the subjugation of criminal gangs, to end a 60-year conflict fueled by drug trafficking that has left more of 450 thousand deaths.
Petro also promised to push through deep economic and social reforms to reduce poverty and inequality in the South American country of 50 million people.
But he currently does not have a coalition in Congress to push his projects forward, after the alliance made up of parties from the left, center and even the right that supports him disintegrated at the end of April.
Analysts and politicians maintain that this situation, added to the scandal involving his son, could affect his governance and further reduce his support, which has fallen since he took office, according to various polls.
