An unprecedented and complex court case would unleash the investigation for undue interest in the execution of contracts and other crimes of which he has been accused, if the candidate of The League of Anticorruption Leaders arrives at the House of Nariño
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Rodolfo Hernández (Colprensa – Sergio Acero)
One month after the second presidential round, a judicial hearing is scheduled against Rodolfo Hernández, the current candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, but the course of the process would change if it goes back to Gustavo Petro and be elected head of state on June 19.
The Office of the Attorney General of the NationIn May 2021, he accused Hernández, along with five other officials and a contractor from his Bucaramanga mayor’s office, of the crime of improper interest in the conclusion of contracts, for allegedly having interceded in a consulting contract, to direct it from the Cleaning Company. of Bucaramanga (EMAB) and to benefit the engineer Jorge Hernán Alarcón Ayala, related to the Vitalogic company.
The case is currently being handled by the 10th Criminal Judge of the Bucaramanga Circuit, who would have concluded the preparatory phase to start the trial against the president and other interveners. The now candidate has not accepted the charges and has claimed his innocence, so it should be the development of the process that determines whether or not he committed crimes.
Currently The case is being handled by the ordinary courts, as is appropriate since he does not currently hold any public office. The Prosecutor’s Office investigates and accuses and it is a criminal judge who leads the process. However, if they reach the Presidency in the second round, they would lose the competition to continue with the case.
In case of being the new president of the Colombians, as of the confirmation by the Registrar of the result, Rodolfo Hernández would be invested with presidential jurisdiction. It is a “protection (to the figure, not to the person) so that in judicial matters procedures are carried out and jurisdiction is given to judges different from those that are carried out in the ordinary jurisdiction,” explained the professor of the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Antioquia Ana María Londoño Agudelo.
The judge of a president is the Congress of the Republic . On the one hand, the Investigation and Accusation Commission of the House of Representativeswhich is in charge of reviewing the facts and gathering the probative material; on the other, the Senatewhich is in charge of judging based on what is determined by that prosecuting body.
“The sanction to which the president can be sentenced is dismissal, loss of political rights or suspension from office. When it comes to other behaviors that have as a consequence, according to the legal system, the custodial sentence, what happens is that the President of the Republic is impeached, his jurisdiction is lifted and what happens is that the Supreme Court of Justice is authorized to authorize a procedure that may lead to a custodial sentence”, explained Professor Londoño.
However, in the case of Hernández, to define what should happen with the progress of his process in case he wins the presidency and changes judge. A discussion similar to the one that occurred with the case of Álvaro Uribe, when he passed from the Supreme Court of Justice to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Lawyer Marlon Díaz explained to the W Radio station that it is clear that the president acquires constitutional jurisdiction and therefore his judge must change. But, by having an accusation formulated and having passed the preparatory stage, it must be defined whether the process should start from scratch in the Accusation Commission or continue in the same phase in the Supreme Court of Justice.< /p>
“Another interpretation, which is the one maintained by the Supreme Court of Justice, is that it must be adapted to the moment in which it finds itself. In other words, this trial, for which it would be convened in the process of Law 906 of 2004, currently by a criminal judge of the Circuit, should go to the First Instance Chamber of the Supreme Court in a supremely complex and problematic adaptation /b>”, the lawyer told the station.
The former Vice Minister of Justice Camilo Burbano explained to the newspaper El Tiempo that the same thing could happen as in the Uribe case, but on the contrary . He will pass from the application of Law 906 to Law 600, because instead of losing jurisdiction as in the case of the former president, Hernández would acquire it if elected president. However, he warns that it would be “a tremendous difficulty due to the definition of the stage in which the process should be resumed.”
In the case of the former president Uribe adapted the procedural stage that he had in the Supreme Court of Justice when he moved to the Prosecutor’s Office. The investigation was interpreted as an accusation in ordinary justice, so the process continued at the same stage, contrary to what the former president’s defense intended.