¿Es posible acabar con la corrupción?

0:06 I' m Roberto Pombo. Welcome to my questions. An average rush program sponsored by KFAM, family compensation box. Corruption seems to be a chronic problem that cannot be eradicated. In just two thousand twenty- two, corruption cost Colombia more than fifty billion pesos. What can be done to end corruption we have normalized it, what is the way it operates most for this chapter. We spoke with Andrés Hernández, Director of Transparency for Colombia, with Mercedes Ceballos, expert in economic criminal investigation, with Felipe Rey, professor of Constitutional Law at Javeriana University, with Paca Azuleta, director of the School of Government of Los Andes and with Senators David Duna and Humberto de la Calle. I' m Roberto Pombo. And this is chapter eighty- eight of my welcome questions.

1:02 Over the years, it is inevitable that one will begin to feel pains and to leave aside foods that he could eat without any problems before. This happens especially with the digestive system. It happened recently that I invited a group of close friends and family for a Sunday lunch, and dietary restrictions did not include dairy, fermented foods, raw foods, red or fibrous meats, raw fruits or vegetables, whole foods, hotel coffee. Then the lunch had less different and in some cases they had to have Dad' s broth. I was surprised and worried to see that even young people or at least under 50 years of age had so many gastric problems and when I asked, it turns out that most have to do with ulcers because of the bacterian son Pirori.

1:49 If you are not known this name, you are a lucky and surely young person. Helicobacter Pillory is one of the most common bacteria in the world. He lives in the digestive system and, according to experts, about two thirds of humanity has it. Your body is the most common bacterial infection. This organism is responsible for 90% of the gastric ulcers. But there is one detail that especially caught my attention, and that is that, even though it is such a popular bacterium, in reality the number of people who get sick due to this bacterium is quite small. If we compare it to the total number of individuals that harbor it in their stomach Only between fifteen and twenty percent of the people who have the helicobacter in their body trigger chronic gastritis, peptic ulcers or some type of gastric cancer. The prevalence of this bacterium is higher in developing countries, and eradicating it at least the human body has become a challenge for medicine because over time it has become resistant to different antibiotics and the organism has been able to adapt to hostile environments. Now that I think about it, Helicobacter pyrori looks pretty much like another old problem that is difficult to eradicate and has adapted to possible solutions. Corruption, especially in Colombia. Corruption has behaved like a bacterium that has managed to mutate and become resistant to the majority of controls that would be antibiotics, and continues to threaten the country'

3:21 s well- being. I am thinking, for example, of a short list of corruption scandals and it is so long that I would not have several chapters of this programme to talk about them. He' d have to make an entire encyclopedia into a corrupt drug. It is so that we already have a glossary of our own like the famous carrucials, that there are only several of those, the diapers, the hiring, the hemophilia, among many others. We have so internalized the corruption that it has become common among voters phrases as no matter what roo. The important thing is to do something. This became notorious in June last year, when the caas and from Córdoba, were filled to receive in the middle of a carnival former senator Bernardoño Elias, after being released on parole for collaborating with the justice system, after spending five years in prison for the crimes of concert to commit crime and laundering of assets and having on top a conviction for bribery and trafficking in influence. This particularly surprises us in a country where corruption seems to be the norm in the political world and even in the private world. I know that comparison is not fair, but in the day- to- day there are also acts of corruption, such as bribing a traffic agent so that he does not fine or pay a manager to take out the passport we have normalized corruption. He moves this question to Felipe Rey, professor of Constitutional Law at Javeriana University, and this he replied. I don' t think so. My general impression is that to see is not that there is a normalization of the problem of corruption.

4:55 I perceive the opposite, that is, I perceive a huge and growing social sensitivity to corruption problems and show them what is happening. Let' s say, any corruption event and this may not have happened before and it' s another effect of the debate on social media also has a huge impact on public deliberation. I think there is a major change too, and it is that, being a left- wing government, well, the left is exposing itself and exposing itself to the problems of corruption that it traditionally accused of on the right and left. As a Government, it faces challenges related to the fight against corruption, for example, in the areas of nomination of office, which is the great responsibility of, for example, a President of the Republic who does not mine to be in charge of huge entities and budgets. The problem of corruption in Colombia must also lead to an institutional discussion. This is an issue that, for example, is valid when we talk about the proposal that I do not share, to eliminate the Attorney General' s Office, that is, in a country with levels of corruption such as Colombia should not only disappear. Entities responsible for this struggle should not disappear; on the contrary, we should be thinking of an institutional infrastructure to combat corruption. Despite the latest cases of corruption known in entities such as the National Risk Management Unit and the hundreds of other cases, such as that of populated centres, mayonetas or bres, the country has in fact improved slightly in the rate of perception of corruption,

6:27 made every year by international transparency. This measurement is the most widely used corruption ranking in the world and qualifies perceived levels of corruption in the public sector in each country. According to the opinions of experts and entrepreneurs. In the measurement of two thousand twenty- three presented this year, Colombia obtained forty points on the scale of one hundred in the cheesemaker means highly corrupt and very clean sel. The country' s score has been improved from two thousand eighteen, when it had thirty- six points. The position of the pass s s in the global ranking also improved and rose to ninety- one to eighty- seven among the hundreds eighty countries evaluated. But that rise on the list is not necessarily because the country feels less corrupt, but because some countries like Tanzania, Suriname, Guyana, with which we share the score of thirty- nine out of a hundred in two thousand twenty- one, maintained the same score last year. However, according to transparency by Colombia, which is part of international transparency, it remains an unsatisfactory outcome, because there are serious problems of corruption that still confront the country and that undermine the fundamental rights of a large part of its inhabitants. And it' s not for less. In December of two thousand twenty- three, María Anaime Varón, Auditor General of Colombia, told Cambio magazine that in two thousand twenty- two corruption cost the country more than fifty billion pesos. To size this, I tell you that this year' s nation' s general budget is five hundred and two six billion.

7:58 I mean, corruption doesn' t take almost ten percent. According to the auditor, this figure ends up being higher because it lacks to calculate the social cost involved. In other words, it is not calculated, for example, the cost that boys and girls have not been properly fed due to the constant theft of school feeding plans. A document published by the Bank of the Republic in two thousand twenty- two found that the number of disciplinary sanctions against public servants registered between two thousand thirteen and two thousand twenty had a peak between two thousand eleven and two thousand eighteen ranging from one thousand two hundred and one thousand four hundred each year, but in two thousand nineteen a fall began that remained at less than six hundred. I want you to pay attention to this figure which I am going to give you next. According to a document of the Secretariat of Transparency of the Presidency, between two thousand ten and two thousand twenty- three, fifty- seven thousand five hundred eighty- two complaints of corruption were registered. This means almost thirteen complaints of crimes against the civil service every day in the last thirteen years. Of these complaints, ninety- three comma nine per cent remain unconvicted, eighty- nine comma seven per cent have not been resolved in court sentences that establish one or a few culprits, and seventy- seven comma five per cent are in the preliminary phase of a formal investigation or trial, so they have not even begun to investigate. These numbers are scandalous because they speak of high levels of impunity, that is, that justice is applied to cases of corruption- related crimes in a timid six percent.

9:31 And this is not only worrying, but it makes sense if you see that the number of corruption complaints has decreased dramatically. While in two thousand sixteen there were five thousand four hundred and forty- seven denunciations, the number went down until last year there were only eight hundred and two. The same applies to convictions for corruption, which were nine percent in two thousand thirteen and ten years later have gone down to less than one percent last year. Justice has its own time, because a corruption trial can take up to ten years to reach a sanction. It is well known that in this country it gives justice is pachydermic that takes its time, but what is the role of the justice system in the solution of corruption. I looked for Paca Azuleta, director of the School of Government of the University of the Andes to answer this question and this he told me. The role of the justice system in the fight against corruption. It is the role of the justice system in any fight against crime and crime. Corruption is a way to call a group of crimes that do damage common goods, common goods and services, damage trust in institutions through personal exploitation of issues that are collective. Justice must investigate taxation and condemn acts of corruption by the judges of the Republic. Justice, too, or the judiciary,

11:05 must have protocols, programmes, handbooks to promote transparency and prevent and mitigate the risks of corruption. The very functioning of the judicial branch, the prosecutor ' s office and the judges of Republic A. We already know that it is a serious problem, but that we are so concerned about corruption. According to a poll conducted by Ibander in December of two thousand twenty- three, for thirty- one percent of Colombians surveyed, unemployment and the economy are their main concern. Concern for public order and security ranks second among the biggest concerns, with twenty- four percent, and third is corruption, with sixteen percent.

11:48 On the other hand, in January of this year, World' s global study of ipsoes What Worris showed that corruption ranks third among the concerns of Colombians, with thirty- three percent, only behind unemployment with forty- one percent and violence with thirty- eight percent. According to regular surveys by imbamer Paul, corruption is often the most alarming problem for citizens. However, current legislation does not provide adequate safeguards for whistleblowers of corruption or preventive measures against offences linked to such complaints. It is not easy to denounce corruption in Colombia. It is enough to see the number of social leaders and observers who are threatened and killed every year for daring to denounce. The list is long, but there are fresh examples, such as that of Jaime Vázquez de Cúcuta, who had revealed videos that left councillors of that city unstoppable. In addition to cases and corruption related to the nationalization of Venezuelan cars and that he was murdered a few months ago, or like the case of Fabio González and Pablo Bolaños, investigators of the ste and in bonaventure, who warned that another official of that same institution collaborated with the mafia so that for drugs and against the side and instead of paying attention to them, they were transferred to distant cities and opened criminal proceedings for falsehood in public document. ECO DE and Transparency International have urged the country to implement a law that protects those who denounce acts of corruption, guaranteeing them protection against reprisals of any kind, whether physical, economic, social,

13:22 or psychological. However, this remains a pending task for Congress, which has not flowed easily to manage the legislative agenda. Perhaps one of the saddest and most recent examples of whistleblowers of corruption is that of the late Jorge Enrique Pisano, the auditor of the Ruta al Sol Dos project, who died in November of two thousand nineteen in mysterious circumstances. Among the authorities. They claim that his death was due to natural causes. His family thinks he was murdered. This occurred after his allegations of embezzlement of funds in the work. In November last year, the Government enacted a bill with its name that seeks to protect whistleblowers from acts of corruption. However, today it has not had its first debate in Congress and if it is not approved in June, this project of leice ondig But this is not the first attempt to protect whistleblowers from corruption.

14:15 Already in two thousand nineteen, then President Iván Duque led the bill Pedro Pascasio Martínez, which sought to protect the whistleblowers. But a year later, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Daniel Palacio, asked the First Committee of the House of Representatives, to dismiss the bill, for the more than eighty proposed amendments to the text and for the request of the then prosecutor Francisco Barbosa, to examine the initiative in depth to provide a more detailed opinion. According to the newspaper of the country, the Director of Transparency for Colombia, Andrés Hernández Auro Comillas, the Congress has not wanted to give a serious debate on this issue. The House of Representatives has received bills and has not seen even the first debate. It is clear that if I want to attack this corruption, I should protect whoever denounces it. I' m closing Comillas. The document published by the Bank of the Republic on corruption, which I mentioned earlier, also found that in the early decade of two thousand ten there was a significant increase in the objective indicators of corruption and concluded that this fact casts doubt on the effectiveness of the laws recently implemented to combat corruption. I see all this, and I wonder if the bills are enough to put an end to corruption. I asked this question to the Director of Transparency for Colombia Andrés Hernández.

15:35 Laws aren' t enough to end corruption. In Colombia and in general, many anti- corruption norms have been created in Latin America in recent decades, but these rules have two problems. First, that many are left without sufficient implementation and, second, that several laws leave cracks open through which corruption continues to slip. Nor have we been able to assess without more rules helps to have less corruption or if perhaps we are falling into an excess of regulation that could even favor new irregularities. In spite of all this, it is important to reiterate that laws are necessary to deal with corruption, because the rules allow us to have instruments to prevent and attack this problem from legality and not from outside democratic frameworks. To think that we can fight corruption outside the law carries the risk of manipulating the anti- corruption flag to favor authoritarian and anti - democratic actions. Beyond this, we need more ambitious and effective strategies to confront corruption that combine robust laws and effective implementation, as well as greater public leadership and commitment from non- state actors, such as the business sector and society as a whole. To the point of assuming that being corrupt is not normal, as if it were not enough. We have to add a new element to the problem of corruption, it is already drug trafficking, and it is that the war on drugs goes through the country everywhere as a total wound and corruption is one of the ways in which it manages to keep rubbing.

17:04 Benjamin Lessing is an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago. The study of the criminal conflict, that is, organized violence involving armed groups that do not seek the power of formal state, such as drug cartels, prison gangs, paramilitary sites. He is owed something known as Lessing' s trilemma, which says it is impossible to attack drug trafficking, corruption and violence. At the same time. The explanation is that if drug trafficking is repressed, the price of bribes goes up and officials have more incentives to corrupt themselves, while fighting corruption. Drug traffickers can resort to more violence to maintain their business. The mere figure of Pablo Escobar in Congress, the murder of Luis Carlos Ganán or the same process eight zero are examples of what solving corruption without first solving the drug problem is going to be very difficult. In two thousand twenty- one, Transparency for Colombia published the report Fight against corruption and Fight against drug trafficking in Colombia. He found, through interviews that the institutions charged with dealing strategically with the fight against drug trafficking. With the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, the Transparency Secretariat and the National Planning Department, they had not integrated the fight and promotion of transparency and integrity into policies to combat drug trafficking, nor into concrete and strategic actions of the entities working in the system. And he also found that, in addition to attacking the drug trafficking production chain, it is also necessary to promote actions in areas highly associated

18:36 with corruption, such as money laundering. Violence and armed conflict have also been instrumental in keeping corruption rampant. And just as it is said that making the law, making the trap, something similar happens with technology and corruption. During a meeting of the World Bank' s Global Alliance of Enemies of Corruption, it was stressed that the management of digital documents is simplifying the embezzlement of funds, the perpetration of economic or property crimes, the usurpation of assets or the disappearance of evidence in investigations against fraud. I asked Mercedes Cevallos, a forensic auditor and expert in economic criminal investigation, what the role of anti- corruption technology is. This he told me. Technology plays a very important role in preventing public and private corruption. Today we have technological tools that allow us to anticipate corrupt behaviors that can be committed by natural or legal persons within a technological environment, almost like predicting some kind of behavior at the level of information systems.

19:45 It is now possible based on data analytics, artificial intelligence and psychological profiling of individuals who are more likely to commit corrupt behaviors. This information that gives us the technology from different technological understandings and tools of criminal investigation, we can use them in the prevention of corruption. It is important that public and private companies are aware of these mechanisms and include them in their mechanisms for preventing corruption. Perhaps one of the most common ways in which this problem is maintained is in electoral politics, in its various varieties, and is that there is a whole apparatus for the machinery of corruption to move, although more like a pyramid.

20:33 I am referring more precisely to the purchase of votes, whether in exchange for silver or for posts and contracts. It requires politicians who know the functioning of the state, its bureaucracy and the legal gaps in which they take refuge to contract around here, in exchange for a thousand votes in the Communal Action Board or a contract of a secretariat or ministry, in exchange for humorous people to vote. In short, the techniques have been refined every time. The death of the late politician Mario Castaño showed how this platform of political corruption works. The country newspaper reviews this case very well. In June to two thousand twenty- three, Castaño was sentenced to fifteen years and eleven months in prison, for concert to offend interest due to conclusion of contracts speculated confusion Gestaffer, according to the Spanish medium Castaño, was in charge of a complex system that manipulated the allocation of public contracts between two thousand twenty and March of two thousand twenty- two. Research shows that this politician had an influence on the delivery of state contracts worth forty- three million pesos, approximately ten two million dollars, and he always received payments for improperly doing so. It had control over different organizations such as the Department for Social Prosperity of PS, the Ministries of Interior and Sport, the Disaster Risk Management Unit, the Governorate of the Choco.

21:57 The sena affects projects in several regions of Colombia. Serving as an intermediary between mayors and governors to receive money has been an old technique. In fact, in two thousand twenty- two Blue Radio peridists denounced with testimonies from local leaders that officials of the Comptroller' s office demanded coimas of between one and two percent in exchange for deceiving or authorizing ocadbas projects. The supercostrus are another traditional tactic of corruption and of this there is a fresher example, that of the famous carrots of La Guajira. In January of this year, the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management announced the delivery of forty tanks to supply water to several communities in La Guajira. Shortly afterwards, price irregularities were observed and double acronyms revealed costs of up to twenty zero million pesos in a contract that amounted to forty- six zero million and could spend hours recounting the corruption scandals of each government. But I run out of time for this chapter transparency by Colombia and again published his report Radiography of the Acts of Corruption in Colombia two thousand sixteen, two thousand twenty. The document is quite interesting because it shows precisely the wiring of methods of corruption. For example, they found that the national government is the entity most affected by acts of corruption thirty- two percent, followed by mayors twenty- seven percent. Then the private sector by twelve percent and the governorates by eleven percent. But beyond those numbers, the most important

23:33 data is more than fourteen million people were directly affected by corruption. The majority of those directly affected are boys, girls of adolescents followed by students and the socio- economically vulnerable population a and añapa. In that period, between two thousand sixteen and two thousand twenty were lost thirteen comma sixty- seven billion pesos in cases of corruption three times the resources that were allocated for early childhood care in the nation' s general budget. In two thousand twenty- one the data that the national governments are the ones most affected by corruption crosses them with different scandals that have had to work close to the presidents, even directly to the presidents, and one cannot help wondering it is possible in Colombia that a president should be tried for corruption. He moves the question to Senators Humberto de la Calle and David Luna. Of course, mechanisms to try presidents in Colombia exist and not just for corruption, for any other crime, and not just for crimes. The short constitution that a president can be removed for indignity, which is a much broader concept. Then the problem is not in the rules. What happens is that, in practice, the system has meant that the House Indictment Commission, which is the one that would present it to the House, to the proposal to accuse a president before the Senate, because he lives co- opted by the Executive, which happens in general with Congress.

25:03 So we' re in a little bit of a jammed- up situation if there' s written law, but in practice there' s no confidence in Congress. The incidence of the executive branch is very high, in such a way that it paralyzes the trials, which for Colombians in general, with more or less reason, has meant that impunity for the high- level rulers is enormous and for many, I believe it is something that in the present circumstances is impossible to modify. But of course, Colombia may have a President of the Republic investigated, charged and convicted for corruption or any other crime. The Constitution of the 1990s makes it absolutely clear what is the procedure for doing so.

25:57 More in the past they have made political judgments. You will remember that of President Samper, who was investigated by the Indictment Commission of the House, that his case reached the House Plenary, but the Plenary decided not to accuse him before the Senate of the Republic for trial at that time. It seems to me that it is important to remember history and it seems to me that it is very important to know in this case the constitutional norm. This is not conjunctural. It' s not about President Gustavo Petro being President today, or being left or right. It is that there can be both evidence and, of course, researchers, in this case, representatives to the House, with enough pants and a clean conscience to be able to make decisions in law, not in politics, and in that sense, because it is the representatives to the House who are part of that commission of accusations. Recently, former prosecutor Alfonso Gómez Méndez reflected in a column of opinion on this problem. The Ministry of the Interior, Ladian, the National Electoral Council and other bodies already have sufficient tools to combat corruption. What is required to get to the bottom of the problem is more political will. Corruption in Colombia has shown a decrease, at least in perception. However, it continues to cost the resources for

27:27 education, the feeding of children and the water of the most thirsty, but also the lives of those who dare to denounce. It' s so much that I can' t get half an hour to talk about it. The disillusionment of Colombians with traditional politics is hardly justified. It seems that there is no political party or government that has not been spattered by corruption. However, it is a struggle in which we cannot lower our arms, even if corruption shows itself to be everywhere and generate resistance. AsÉlycobacter pilorit I am Roberto Pombo, or s is one chapter eighty- eight of my questions. See you in the next chapter from now on. This chapter of my questions is available on all podcast platforms. This episode was made possible thanks to CAFAM family compensation box, Roberto Pombo Directorate, General Production, Juan Abel Gutiérrez, editorial advisor, Daniel San Pedro Espino, Screenplays juan Abel Gutiérrez and Johnny Rodríguez.

28:26 Field production Marcela Salazar and Lucía Beltrán. Post- production of audio Carlos Bernar