Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti attacked the Supreme Court on Tuesday after reporting a raid on his home over corruption. “The magistrate (Cristina) Lombana is completely crazy, crazy, and she is also a criminal (…). She is sick, obsessed with me,” he said in a video broadcast on social networks. Later, the politician in an interview with W Radio called her a “crazy son of a bitch.” He also announced that he will turn to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to denounce the judge, who is investigating him for several acts of corruption that date back to his past as a congressman.
“He has no witnesses, he has no evidence to say where I would have stolen the money”, the 58-year-old veteran politician, deputy from 2006 to 2022, defended himself first from the right and then from the center. According to what is now the right-hand man of the left-wing president Gustavo Petro, the judge limits himself to “exploring planet Earth” to find crimes with which to hurt him, and has even put pressure on the people of Barranquilla to indict him. “You are abusing your power. Three years ago I stopped being a senator, you cannot investigate. And you have been challenged twice because it has been proven that you were trying to incriminate me according to your interests,” he denounced. The Supreme Court, for its part, has not yet ruled.
It is not the first time that the current minister’s violence is evident. Two years ago some audio leaked in which he insulted Gustavo Petro’s then chief of staff, Laura Sarabia, who came to politics thanks to him. “You’re there for me, you son of a bitch, for me!”, “you fool”, “of course you owe me everything, everything!”, “you’re a laughing stock in front of everyone”, “idiot”, “stupid”, “you’re smaller than the little one you are”. There is a long list of insults to the person who was his private secretary, and then rose to Petro’s career as his chief of staff, director of the Department of Social Prosperity and chancellor. Benedetti then said that these expressions occurred when he was drunk, admitted to having a substance addiction problem and declared that he had rehabilitated in an express program in Mexico.
President Petro wanted Benedetti to leave the government when he came to power in August 2022, especially while corruption allegations against his debate chief in the 2022 presidential campaign were investigated. He appointed him ambassador to Caracas and then to Rome, but before the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, he who was one of the architects of the support of traditional political groups for the left campaign was gradually approaching the center of power in Bogotá. In February this year Petro appointed him head of the Office and then, in March, of the Ministry of the Interior. The president even let go several left-wing ministers who opposed his arrival, such as Susana Muhamad, to keep him in the government. Since then, the political minister has demonstrated his closeness to the president he helped elect.
