Interestingly, both properties were acquired between 2016 and 2017 while the bidding process for the Bucaramanga garbage model was being carried out and when the now presidential candidate he was the mayor
In the image, Socorro Oliveros and Rodolfo Hernández. Photo: Rodolfo Hernández Campaign
One of the banners of the campaign of the presidential candidate, Rodolfo Hernández, is focused on ‘ending corruption’, one that has been supported by the vast majority of candidates for the House of Nariño. However, the man born in Piedecuesta -Santander- has been criticized from different sectors and also in different debates, about an investigation against him for the crime of allegedly improperly entering into contracts in the Vitalogic process to improve the cleaning service while he was mayor of Bucaramanga.
However, this is not the only question that the candidate for the League of Anti-Corruption Governors has on his back: at the beginning of April of this year a new case arose that not only commits him to him, but also his wife, Socorro Oliveros while Hernández was president of the Santander capital.
According to the portal Cuestión Pública, Oliveros bought two properties in the United States valued at almost a million dollars.The curious thing about these acquisitions is that they were made in the middle of the Vitalogic tender.
It was 2016, Hernández’s first year as mayor of Bucaramanga. In September, the first lady of the city bought an apartment in the city of Fort Lauderdale, the American Venice of the state of Florida. It is a property of 128 square meters that was bought from the consulting firm RNG International Corporation for a value of 345 thousand dollars,which at that time meant 1,020 million Colombian pesos.
Eight days before this purchase was confirmed, Carlos Gutiérrez, Luis Carlos Hernández -son of Rodolfo and Socorro- and their partner, businessman Cucuteño Luis Andelfo Trujillo, signed a brokerage contract between the companies JC de Colombia E.U and Servicios Convergentes de Colombia SAS ESP Sercon in which it is agreed “a commission for its management of Promotion, Approach, Management and Facilitation in the execution of a contract for a term of 30 years of garbage (…) in the municipality of Bucaramanga”.
In that order, the document specifies the commission percentages -agreed at 666 thousand dollars of that year- that each of the three subjects already mentioned would receive after signing the contract. Thus, Luis Andelfo Trujillo would receive 15%, Luis Carlos Hernández 28%, and a new character, Jorge Hernán Ayala, would keep another 34%.
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During the tender for the Vitalogic case, in 2016 a contract was signed between the companies JC de Colombia E.U. and Servicios Convergentes de Colombia SAS and whose commission was 666 thousand dollars. PHOTO: Courtesy (Public Question)
The commission mentioned there was charged to favor, presumably, the company Vitalogicwithin the tender for the garbage collection model in Bucaramanga. All this while the now presidential candidate was mayor. In addition to that, Trujillo Hernández himself stated in 2019 that the name of Luis Carlos Hernández appears in the contract at the request of his mother.
In that sense, the transaction for the purchase of the building was carried out while the engineer finished finalizing the controversial tender to hand over the garbage business in the city to a contractor for 30 years by holding aa contract valued at nearly 250 million dollars.
Other proof of the purchase of that property were WhatsApp chats between Luis Carlos Hernández and businessman Trujillo. There, the first asks his partner for help to get 50 thousand dollars because his mother “has to go the other week to sign the papers for the purchase of the apartment in Miami” . Previously, the son of the former local president had bought another 500 thousand dollars from John Horacio Rueda, who in 2010 was captured in Venezuela for money laundering.
In 2020, this same subject returned to be captured during another investigation for the same crime, but was soon released. Now, regarding the purchase of the apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Socorro Oliveros herself transferred it to a company that she has run with her son since 2019: HG Constructora LLC , which put the property up for sale for 355 thousand dollars, 10 thousand more than the value for which it was acquired.
The document shows the purchase transaction of a first apartment by the wife of Rodolfo Hernández and which was transferred to HG Constructora, a company that he runs with his son, Luis Carlos Hernández PHOTO: Courtesy (Public Question)
In another WhatsApp chat revealed by the aforementioned media, it is shown how Luis Carlos regrets the ’round deal’ of buying and selling real estate, because in the process, they bought the cheapest dollars and sold them to Socorro for a much higher value. higher.“I should never have allowed what I did with my mom. Make a business for myself with money from her”, he wrote.
In the chat, Luis Carlos Hernández shows regret for the business of buying and selling dollars in which he involved his mother PHOTO: Courtesy (Public Question)
2017: year of the purchase of a second property
On April 6, in the midst of the Vitalogic tender scandal, Socorro Oliveros bought another property in the United States: a house in Weston -Florida- of more than 220 square meters, which had three bedrooms, the same number of bathrooms, and a swimming pool. The value: 630 thousand dollars, around 1,800 million pesos at the time.
More than four years later, on July 12, 2021, Oliveros herself sold the property for 695 thousand dollars to two individuals.This occurred two months after Rodolfo Hernández made his intention to reach the Presidency of the Republic official; but going back to 2017, the contracting specifications had already been published where Vitaogic was one of the heavyweights thanks to the previous management carried out by Luis Carlos Hernández and his partner.
Sale of the second property purchased by Socorro Oliveros in the United States. PHOTO: Courtesy (Public Question)
What happened next was that the Attorney General’s Office found irregularities in this process and the hiring failed. Months later, Luis Carlos filed a complaint against his father with the Public Ministry for inconsistencies in that tender, which currently has Rodolfo Hernández waiting for the final stage of the trial to arrive, which is July 21. the day on which you must present your arguments before the Prosecutor’s Office.