Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, said on his Twitter account that in his government “blackmail over the public office or contracts has not been accepted, nor has money been received in the campaign from people linked to drug trafficking, much less has figures have been handled like 15,000 million outside of our accounting”.
“I do not accept blackmail, nor do I see politics as a space for personal favors,” the president said in a lengthy tweet.
“If they think it’s a threat, it’s a threat”
Armando Benedetti, who until last Friday was Colombian ambassador in Caracas, threatened to reveal secrets of the presidential campaign, upset by the treatment received in the Government, in conversations with the now former chief of staff, Laura Sarabia published this Sunday by the week magazine.
The former ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, denied audios published by Semana, with threats that he could reveal secrets about the 2022 elections.
The questioned politician, who was fundamental in Petro’s campaign and decisive for his triumph on the Atlantic coast, sent a series of audio messages to Sarabia in recent days to express his disagreement with Petro’s delay in receiving it, the disclosure of which has caused a stir in the country.
“Get ready because I claim my political space at any time and don’t do it so they can see, and if you think it’s a threat, it’s a threat and if you want to record it, record it, I explode because yesterday you mistreated me like shit and I don’t know that it does to Benedetti”, he affirms in what was published by Semana.
Benedetti “must explain his words before the Prosecutor’s Office and the country”
In the audios, Benedetti reminds Sarabia that he raised “15,000 million pesos (about 3.5 million dollars)” for Petro’s campaign and tells him that if he speaks up and tells who financed his campaign on the Atlantic coast, They will all end up in jail.
“It’s not sucking a cock (joke), it’s not a threat, because you know me. I’m not going to let myself be sucked, Laura, I swear on the lives of my children that it will never happen, we all sink, we all end, we’re going to jail,” he tells him in one of the recordings published by the magazine.
In this regard, Petro assures that he came to the Presidency “only to achieve more social justice in my country. That is what moves and obsesses me. If there are people with a different logic in the Government, it is better that they separate from it.”
Una agencia de inteligencia en el gobierno Duque nos grabó ilegalmente todas las conversaciones hechas en Zoom durante todos los meses de mi campaña y fueron publicadas en Semana. Nunca pudieron publicar un minuto siquiera en donde yo dijera algo ilegal o irregular.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) June 5, 2023
La…
“What I am going to tell you is not a threat”
Benedetti had arrived in Bogotá last Wednesday to speak with Petro after being pointed out as the person who leaked to the press the possible abuse of power in the case of the investigation of Marelbys Meza, who was the nanny of Sarabia’s son and accused of stealing a briefcase with an unspecified sum of money from the house of the now ex-official.
However, Petro did not receive Benedetti that day, who interpreted this treatment as a humiliation, according to Semana , and for this reason he threatened Sarabia – who was his adviser in his days as a senator and who introduced him to the current president – to tell what You know about the last presidential campaign.
“So, even if it’s a hypocrite, one goes and receives people, but the treatment that you and the president gave me yesterday, fagot, I don’t know, besides, what I’m going to tell you is not a threat (… ) I see that this can impute me, I kick you son of a bitch, and we all fall there,” Benedetti told Sarabia, in his audios loaded with swear words and personal offenses.
Repudiation, requests for resignation, denial and apologies
The Benedetti audios published by Semana were addressed to Laura Sarabia (left), now former Chief of Staff of the Government of Gustavo Petro (right).
The content of the recordings caused immediate repudiation in political sectors and Benedetti later published a message on Twitter in which he assured that the audios “have been manipulated” and apologized to the president “for the aggression and malicious attack that did NOT come from me “.
“I think I understand what is happening to Armando Benedetti’s mind, I accept his apologies, but he must explain his words to the Prosecutor’s Office and the country,” added Petro in his tweet.
Meanwhile, the former presidential candidate Federico Gutiérrez asked that Petro “resign” considering that “the elections were stolen. They made all the cheats that have been and will be”.
“The shameful audios released today show that we are governed by a gang of riffraff,” said former conservative minister Juan Camilo Restrepo.
