Nicolás Petro claims that the president was unaware about the dirty money that entered his campaign

President Gustavo Petro’s son, Nicolás Petro Burgos, claimed in an interview published this Saturday in Semana that neither his father nor the campaign manager, Ricardo Roa, knew about the dirty money that he and his ex-wife Daysuris Vásquez received during the presidential campaign. “Neither my dad nor the campaign manager, Ricardo Roa, knew about the money that Daysuris and I received from Santander Lopesierra [ex-narco] and Gabriel Hilsaca [son of a contractor who is on trial for financing paramilitaries],” said Nicolás Petro. “Obviously, they did not know that part of those contributions I used for the campaign,” he said. He admitted taking the other part.

When asked by journalist Vicky Dávila if President Petro can remain in power, Nicolás reiterated that his father never knew about the income of money from those two sources to the campaign: “We must also see the degree of responsibilities. For example, with the issue of “el Hombre Malboro” and Gabriel Hilsaca (son of Turco Hilsaca), he (Gustavo Petro) did not know about those contributions. I never told him about it. He had no way of knowing about those contributions. Then, in each case, justice will have to determine the degree of responsibility”. Nicolás also recognizes that his “responsibility” towards his father “was not having told him that there were two people who wanted to make contributions. That is my big mistake, my big failure”.

However, Petro failed to answer if contractor Euclides Torres, another possible financier mentioned, donated resources, how much or if his father knew. “Well, I can not comment on that, because I am in a negotiation process with the Prosecutor’s Office. There are many facts, many people, many situations that are matters of reserve.”

In the interview, published just hours after a judge released Nicolás because he agreed to collaborate with the Attorney General’s Office, the president’s son also deflected blame from former Interior Minister and now ambassador to France, Alfonso Prada. He claims that the latter did not give him any post, as Vásquez has said. “There are people on the list, but they have not really had any participation. One of those people is Prada. I want to tell you, and it is going to sound ugly and they are going to say Nicolás is a hp (son of a bitch), but it is the truth. I lied to Daysuris that they had given me some quotas so that she could pass me a resume of a lawyer who was a friend of hers. To have her contact. That is the reality”.

The lawyer on the resume is Laura Ojeda, former best friend of Daysuris and now partner of Nicolás Petro, with whom she is pregnant. The president’s son makes it clear that the former Minister of the Interior never offered him anything irregular: “Yes, I did have meetings with Prada, but they never addressed issues of participation or anything like that, they were like protocol meetings, so to speak”, explains Nicolás to Semana. Nicolás also explains that he met with other government ministers, such as Mauricio Lizcano, Carolina Corcho or Irene Vélez, to “get to know each other and talk about the Caribbean region, about the expectation that there was towards the government, an expectation that has not been fulfilled yet”.

In the interview, the president’s firstborn son explains the reasons why he decided to collaborate with justice. “I want to be at the birth of my son, I want to raise my son. I know what it is to feel or what it is to grow up with a cold and distant father. I don’t want that for my son. So, it is for him, for my family, that I decide to accept this collaboration with the Prosecutor’s Office.”

Gustavo Petro’s response

In response to Nicolás’ interview with Semana magazine, President Gustavo Petro wrote on his Twitter account this Saturday morning: “What happened with my son is terrible and very regrettable for me. Hopefully someday I can talk to him and forgive us. As I said before, I will not put pressure as president on justice in his case, the judicial officials involved in his process will be respected by me”. And he added: “The campaign did not receive any money of an illicit nature and I found out about what happened in a meeting I had with Nicolás’ ex-wife in my office just a few months ago when I asked for my son to be investigated”.

In the interview, Nicolás emphasizes that everything happened because of his bad relationship with his father, of whom he says he feels like a political chess piece. “Vicky, if he didn’t raise me, it wasn’t my fault. It was because he abandoned my mother when I was a newborn baby. That’s the reality,” he says. “He was my superhero, really. But it was always a very distant and cold relationship because of him.”

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