Álvaro Uribe has been formally charged by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office for the crimes of bribery and witness tampering.

If found guilty, the leader of the Democratic Center could face Imprisonment between 6 and 12 years,

Uribe’s defense had requested the annulment of the process against the former president, which Heredia “totally rejected” as he considered it “absolutely unacceptable”.

In addition, the judge acknowledged leftist senator Iván Cepeda and former attorneys generals Jorge Perdomo and Eduardo Montealegre, as well as Deyanira Gómez, the ex-wife of paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, as victims of the case.

Cepeda’s lawyer, Reinaldo Villalba, celebrated the resolution and assured that “these are decisions that not only recognize the situation of the victims but also Victims need access to justice,

Gilberto Villarreal, the prosecutor handling the case, accused Uribe of being “the determinant of the successive homogeneous competition of three crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings”.

For Villarreal, this implies that “for his own benefit or that of a third party, he offers or promises a benefit to the person who has witnessed the criminal act so that he refrains from coming to testify or so that he fails to tell the truth either totally or partially.”

They also accused him of “consistently committing two counts of procedural fraud”, that is, “any fraudulent means by which he misleads a public servant in order to obtain a sentence, resolution or administrative act contrary to the law.”

Also for “determinant of the crime of bribery” because he “gave or promised money or other utility to a witness so that he would be totally or partially untruthful or untruthful in his testimony.”

Already in 2020, Uribe was denied his freedomAccused of procedural fraud and bribery, he became the first president in the country’s history to face such sanction.

It all started during a debate in Congress in September 2014, when Senator Ivan Cepeda of the leftist Polo Democratico Alternativo party accused Uribe of Links with paramilitary groups and drug traffickers,

In support of his allegations he presented several testimonies from former paramilitary personnel.

At the time, Álvaro Uribe was charged with establishing the metro block, A branch of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the armed group that confronted the bloodthirsty guerrillas and killed thousands of civilians.

But the former president responded to Cepeda’s accusation with a suit against him before the Supreme Court and accused him of searching Colombian prisons for former paramilitaries to serve as false witnesses against him.

The Supreme Court investigated the case for several years, with both Uribe and Cepeda, as well as all the witnesses involved, testifying.

In 2018, the court dismissed the charges against Cepeda and surprisingly opened a case Formal investigation against Uribe for witness tamperingWhich included offences of bribery and procedural fraud.

Two years later, Uribe resigned his senatorial seat to leave the jurisdiction and thus, his case would go to ordinary justice. Only then did the prosecutor’s office decide there was no evidence to try him judicially.

But this year the situation changed Gilberto Villarreal took matters into his own hands on January 16. On April 9, the prosecutor said that, based on the physical evidence and probable elements, there were reasons to charge Uribe.

Uribe emphasizes that The allegations respond to political interests,