http://elsiglo.com.pa/internacional/fiscalia-colombiana-imputa-cargos-10-exfuncionarios-corrupcion-odebrecht/24233815

On August 17, they announced that they would charge more than 50 people

The Colombian prosecutor’s office charged ten former officials of the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI), implicated in alleged irregularities in a contract with the Brazilian company Odebrecht for the construction of the Ruta del Sol II highway, as announced two weeks ago.

The defendants, as reported by the prosecution in a statement on Wednesday, “would have distanced themselves from their public functions and obligations to participate collectively in decisions that significantly increased the original contract in their budget and ended up benefiting the concessionaire of which they made part of Odebrecht”.

This accusation follows what was announced by the prosecutor’s office on August 17 when it said that it was going to charge more than 50 people, including 33 current and former ANI officials and the Brazilian magnate Marcelo Odebrecht, for alleged irregularities in a contract with the Odebrecht company for the construction of the Ruta del Sol II highway.

The prosecution explained that the charges against these senior executives of the ANI are for their alleged participation in irregular acts detected in four additions made to a contract signed in January 2010.

The crimes blamed by the prosecution are contracts without compliance with legal requirements and undue interest in entering into contracts.

For the prosecution, with these actions, the former employees, the contractor and the former controller “would have ignored the purpose of the original concession contract and allowed the inclusion of a new road that had no relationship or physical connection with the ‘Ruta del Sol II’ project” .

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Additionally, 3,177 million pesos (about 777,000 dollars today or about 712,000 euros) for the studies and designs of the Ocaña-Gamarra work.

Likewise, it is proven that damages were caused to the State, in the understanding that the original budget was increased and advances were made to provide cash flow to the concessionaire.

At the time, the Colombian prosecutor’s office claimed to have “revealed the criminal mechanism”,that allowed the multinational, from its headquarters in Brazil, to create a department “dedicated exclusively to the distribution of bribes throughout the world.”

This model was replicated in Colombia, according to the prosecutor’s office, and the bribes had “the help of senior government officials such as ministers and directors of institutes; congressmen, public officials at different levels, lobbyists, contractors and individuals,” he explained .

This “parallel criminal company”, according to the prosecution, acted in the award of the contract for the so-called Ruta del Sol II , which links the center of the country, from Puerto Salgar, in the department of Cundinamarca, with the Caribbean, in San Roque ( Cease).