Anti-money laundering group suspends Colombia after President Petro declassifies confidential report
The Egmont Group, an international organization that fights money laundering, said it will suspend Colombia from its global information sharing platform
By MANUEL RUEDA Associated Press
September 23, 2024, 10:08 PM
BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- The Egmont Group, an international organization created to combat money laundering, said Monday that it has suspended Colombia's access to its global information sharing platform, after President Gustavo Petro shared confidential information that Colombian officials had obtained from the group.
The Egmont Group said in a statement that Colombia's government will no longer have access to a secure web used by the group to share data on financial crimes and that can be accessed by 177 member countries. The group said the measure will remain in effect while it further investigates the situation.
Earlier this month, Petro read out information from a document obtained through the Egmont Group suggesting that in 2021, Colombia's government, which was then headed by conservative President Iván Duque, paid an Israeli company $11 million in cash to acquire Pegasus spyware.
Petro made the revelation during a nationally televised speech, where many expected him to discuss a truckers' strike instead. The president said that the spyware was used by Duque's conservative administration to spy on activists and members of left-wing parties that opposed his government, including Petro himself. Duque administration officials have denied the charges.
Pegasus is able to gather information from cellphones undetected and control a cellphone's camera and microphones. The software was developed by an Israeli company and has been used to target more than 50,000 politicians, journalists and human rights activists by at least a dozen governments, according to a report published by Amnesty International and 18 media organizations in 2021.
More:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/anti-money-laundering-group-suspends-colombia-after-president-113948382
( "You are killing us" )
Iván Duque has been Álvaro Uribe's protege, who followed him as a Colombian President after Uribe's party bribed two Colombian senators to help change Colombia's constitution to allow him another term as President. (Of course this was never perceived as a problem in Washington, as they were always gung-ho on the little Teflon Don Uribe, as he is very pro-Washington and allows them to use any and all bases they want to use there. They like Colombia as a "lily pad" country from which US military can move south farther into South America or North, anywhere in Central America.) Álvaro Uribe groomed Iván Duque, another heir to very wealthy Colombian parents who is eager to serve hard-right interests, and only hard-right. Both have families which were also crooked and over-involved in hard-right politics.
Duque followed Uribe into office as Colombia's President, and Duque ruled until Gustavo Petro was elected as Colombia's first leftist president, ever. Clearly he is despised by Colombia's feudal, violent, corrupt oligarchy, as well as Washington.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Former president Uribe implicated in paramilitary massacres
4 Jun 2018
Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice has declared that three paramilitary massacres committed between 1996 and 1998 were ‘crimes of lesser humanity’, the equivalent of crimes against humanity. Additionally, the court gave the same status to the 1998 murder of lawyer Jesús María Valle, who had denounced the expansion of paramilitary networks in Antioquia, where the massacres occurred.
The categorisation as crimes of lesser humanity means that investigations will remain open and be treated as priority cases. The Supreme Court decision comes as investigations continue into alleged links between paramilitary groups and the former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, who at the time of the massacres was the governor of Antioquia. Imprisoned paramilitary leaders involved in the crimes have said that Uribe was closely involved in the formation of their organisations.
Jesús María Valle was murdered in February 1998 while working with other human rights lawyers to oppose the spread of paramilitary violence in Antioquia. According to Valle, a ‘tacit agreement’ existed between Governor Uribe, senior military and police officials and paramilitary commanders to support and conduct paramilitary operations in the region. According to paramilitary leader Don Berna, Pedro Moreno ordered the lawyer’s murder. Moreno died in an air accident in 2006.
In 2006, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the Colombian state was responsible for the massacres. On 22 October 1997, around 150 paramilitaries entered the community of El Aro, where over several days they executed at least 17 people. One victim was publically tied to a tree and brutally tortured before being killed, according to Colombia’s Centre of Historical Memory. The paramilitaries also burnt 42 of the 60 houses, stole more than 1,000 heads of cattle and forcibly displaced over 700 residents.
According to paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, who in 2008 was extradited to the United States, a government helicopter hovered over the zone while the killings were being carried out. Mancuso also alleges that Uribe’s secretary, Pedro Moreno, was aware of the paramilitary raid in advance. Another paramilitary leader, Francisco Enrique Villalba, said that Uribe and his brother Santiago both knew of the plans to commit the massacre.
More:
https://justiceforcolombia.org/news/former-president-uribe-implicated-in-paramilitary-massacres/
(Colombia's "paramilitaries" are actually death squads, notorious for terrorizing villagers they suspect of leftist leanings, using chain saws to slaughter citizens as their neighbors are forced to witness. They have done this in villages with Colombian military protecting the roads leading to the villages. Has been well known for decades.)
Uribe's brother, Santiago, who originally organized AUC paramilitaries (death squads)
Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque
soldiers guarding the roads in and out of villages while knowing that there are people in the villages being beaten, slaughtered and terrorized has a familiar ring to it. Let me see if I can think for a moment.........where else have I seen this? Oh yes. Now I remember but best to keep it to myself since supposedly "nothing can be done" except to issue calls for restraint.