Colombia asks Brazil and US for cooperation to investigate Odebrecht corruption

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, announced this Tuesday (15) that his government is requesting the legal collaboration of Brazil and the United States for a comprehensive investigation into corruption involving the construction company Odebrecht and its connection with an influential business group in the country.

Petro instructed his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “use all mechanisms of legal collaboration with the US and Brazilian governments to assess the damages and repairs resulting from the revelations of the Aval Group”.

Grupo Aval, owned by Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, one of the richest men in Colombia, is the main shareholder of Corficolombiana, a company associated with the bribes paid by Odebrecht in the country to win the bid for the Ruta del Sol II highway, which connects the north center of the nation.

Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Grupo Aval with “violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)”. To put an end to the accusation, Grupo Aval accepted a payment agreement of US$ 40 million to the American commission. Corficolombiana also signed an agreement pledging to pay US$ 20 million.

For Petro, the accusation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission opens a new avenue for investigations into bribes paid by Odebrecht to the company.

The Colombian president took advantage of the occasion to criticize Néstor Humberto Martínez, the former Colombian attorney general, with whom he has political disagreements, alleging Martínez’s alleged participation in the case while he was a lawyer for Grupo Aval. This conglomerate includes financial companies such as Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente, Banco Popular, Banco AV Villas, Multibank, the Porvenir pension fund, among others.

Petro stated that “the network of corruption in the Ruta del Sol has an aggravating aspect: the nation’s attorney general was a lawyer for this network and received a successful commission for an official decision obtained through bribery of a public official in several million dollars”.

According to information released by the US Department of Justice in December 2016, Odebrecht paid US$11 million in bribes in Colombia as part of a vast network of corruption established in Latin America and Africa.

However, the Colombian Attorney General’s Office estimated that the construction company paid around 84 billion pesos (approximately US$20.8 million today) in bribes in the country during Martínez’s term.

Given this context, the Colombian president asked the Attorney General’s Office to “reopen the cases, if necessary, related to the Odebrecht-Aval process, and identify the recipients of the bribes.”

He also emphasized the need to review the contracts between Corficolombiana and the Colombian State, starting with the legal stability contract in light of local laws.

Corficolombiana, through a subsidiary called Episol, is one of the main investors in road infrastructure in Colombia, with interests in several road concessions throughout the country.

In response to Petro’s accusations, former prosecutor Martínez said this Tuesday that he was never “a lawyer for the consortium before the State for the processing and adjudication of the two spurious concession contracts for Ruta del Sol, Section 2.”

Martínez, who was Colombia’s attorney general from August 2016 to May 2019, pointed out that he was responsible for the Legal Stability Contract, professionally appointed in 2010, six years before the corruption revelations involving Odebrecht. He had previously held ministerial positions in the country.