This Monday, July 28, and after 67 hearings, the ruling was read in the case against former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez for the alleged crimes of witness bribery and procedural fraud, in which he was found guilty.
Bogotá's 44th Criminal Circuit Judge, Sandra Liliana Heredia, was in charge of announcing the first-instance decision of the trial considered 'trial of the century'.
"Given the importance of this process, which has aroused so much passion—although we know that the meaning of the ruling is a decision that goes hand in hand with the sentence—I am going to expand a bit so that the entire country knows the reasons why this office makes this decision," said Heredia before beginning the reading.
Throughout the investigation, both the prosecution and the defense presented more than 90 witnesses who supported their respective arguments. In addition, a summary of several pages, statements, and evidence was reviewed.
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In reading the sympathetic ruling, the judge indicated that the Prosecutor's Office managed to prove the defendant's responsibility for the crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud , two of the three for which he was brought to trial.
"The first bribe in criminal proceedings in terms of the materiality of the punishable conduct has been proven," Heredia highlighted when evaluating the contacts of the lawyer Diego Cadena, who represented Uribe, with the former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, imprisoned in a Bogotá jail, so that he would not testify about the alleged links of the former president with these illegal armed groups.
Regarding the crime of procedural fraud, the judge highlighted the situation that occurred with 'Tuso' Sierra, a drug trafficker extradited to the United States, whose testimony, according to the defense, was rigged.
History of the process
This process dates back to 2012, when Uribe filed a lawsuit before the Supreme Court for alleged witness tampering against left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, who at that time was preparing a complaint in the Senate against him for alleged ties to paramilitarism. However, Judge José Luis Barceló did not open an investigation against the congressman, but rather initiated a process against the former president for alleged witness tampering so that they would not testify against him.
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Criminal lawyer Jaime Granados, who is leading Uribe's defense, insists that his client never ordered anyone to be bribed and that his only interest in suing Cepeda was to defend his honor and seek the truth. Uribe, who after completing his presidential term was elected senator in 2014 and 2018, resigned his seat in August 2020 so that his case could be referred to the ordinary courts. The Prosecutor's Office initially found no evidence to charge him, but after going to several legal instances,
