In an 85-page ruling, the third section of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca condemned the Nation and the private firm Corficolombian**, for what he considered errors of the Colombian judicial system, the joint payment of what would be the largest reparation in the history of the country in favor of an individual, consisting of the transfer of more than 14 billion pesos.
The payment of this compensation, ordered with a presentation by Judge Clara Cecilia Suárez Vargas, corresponds to almost the entire tax reform approved in 2019 by Congress during the government of President Iván Duque with which it was intended to raise 15.2 billion pesos, and more than half of the reform promoted by President Gustavo Petro, who hopes to raise 20 billion pesos.
The ruling, which goes against what was decided by a civil judge of decongestion, by the Superior Court of Bogotá and the Supreme Court of Justice, declares responsible the Nation, the Judicial Branch, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the Executive Directorate of Judicial Administration and Corficolombiana SA, for judicial errors and condemns them to pay for the alleged damages caused to Alejandro González Beltrán.
The case that has already gone through several instances in the Prosecutor’s Office and in criminal and civil courts, going through the high courts, dates back to February 12, 1999, when it was presented to the offices of the Valley Financial Corporation (Corfivalle) a messenger from Alejandro González Beltrán to collect three CDTs that totaled 175 and a half million pesos and expired on February 17 of that same year.
Although these titles appeared in the name of González Beltrán, they set off alarms in Corfivalle by presenting unusual conditions such as a 10-year term and a fixed rate of 31.30 percent per year, capitalizable interest during the term, which did not appear registered or in the entity’s applications did not have accounting support. Also, it was established that the physical titles that were being presented actually corresponded to those issued in the name of three women.
Corfivalle put the annulled seal on the titles, did not pay them and filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for the crimes of forgery in a private document and fraud. On March 9, 2005, the 9th Criminal Court of Cali sentenced González Beltrán, and in second instance the decision was revoked by the Superior Court of the Valle del Cauca capital.
For the same facts, Luis Ernesto González Valencia, a former employee of the Valle Finance Corporation, was prosecuted, who in statements acknowledged that he carried out irregular operations in the entity.
Within the framework of these processes, it was possible to establish that González Beltrán gave two versions of the operation, first he said that he took the money in cash to the Corfivalle branch on a motorcycle and then He pointed out that it was a transaction associated with previous investments made in portfolio purchase and sale businesses that he had with that entity.
In the investigations, it was not possible to show how González Beltrán accessed the Corporation’s stationery, but it was made clear that it was never proven that the resources were delivered to acquire those titles.
Corficolombiana building.
The pronouncements of the courts
The acquittal of González Beltrán in the criminal case was the subject of the appeal filed by Corficolombiana, which at that time had perfected the merger with Corfivalle, and the Supreme Court of Justice decided to uphold the Court’s ruling considering the existence of doubt reasonable that as a rule favors the defendants.
The process returned to the Court of Cali and in Order of September 2007, which was not notified to Corficolombiana, andMagistrate Juan Manuel Tello agreed to a request by González Beltrán’s defense and returned the titles noting that they had retained their validity and legality. A month later, on behalf of a guardianship presented by Corficolombiana, the case reached the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, which studied the company’s arguments that stressed that it had been an irregular decision and that the Court magistrate had exceeded your competition.
In February 2008, the Court ruled and gave credence to Corficolombiana’s arguments, annulling the decision that returned the titles to González Beltrán and noted that the titles remained valid. ANDThis decision was challenged by Gonzalez Beltrán. The case went to the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court, which left it firm, rejecting its arguments and once again accepting the position of the financial institution.
The protection was then reviewed by the Constitutional Court, which confirmed the decision and warned that the decision of the magistrate of the The Court illegally added the note on the commercial validity of the titles, noting that this issue was not the subject of debate during the criminal proceedings.
Once that legal avenue was exhausted, González Beltrán initiated an executive process in July 2010 and after two changes of court, one of them due to an impediment due to the existence of a prior relationship between the judge and the plaintiff’s lawyer, the case reached to the Tenth Civil Court of the Decongestion Circuit, that it did not agree to the claims and agreed with Corficolombiana, since it was shown that the money that was the object of the deposit never entered Corfivalle.
The appeal of this new decision reached the Superior Court of Bogotá, which upheld the decision, clarifying that when the titles were annulled they deteriorated and their legal effects disappeared. Once again González Beltrán went to court presenting an appeal that was rejected as inadmissible.
In the long passage of the process through these offices, alleged irregularities were evidenced, such as the alleged use of false documents by the plaintiff and the apparent directing of the case to an office to favor it. This alleged manipulation of the distribution is being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The ruling of the executive process in favor of Corficolombiana returned to a pilgrimage through a guardianship, by the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court and the Council of State and was finally ratified. González Beltrán then invoked a request for review that is pending today in the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.
A questioned magistrate appears
The plaintiff went to court again in November 2016 with a claim for direct reparation against the Nation, the Executive Branch, the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the Executive Directorate of Judicial Administration. He argued that the State is patrimonially responsible for the alleged damages suffered by the judicial errors committed by the offices that heard the case and that did not accede to their claims.
The file arrived at the office of the then magistrate of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca Carlos Alberto Vargas Bautista, who today is prosecuted for corruption and from whom the Prosecutor’s Office seized assets worth 9,000 million pesos that would have been bought with money that he would have received for directing his decisions to favor the interests of some of the parties in the processes.
Vargas Bautista is accused of twisting several processes, including one from April 2014, which ordered hea Bogotá Aqueduct Company the payment of a millionaire sum of money to an individual for direct reparation for not buying a property near the Jaboque wetland and that was in the environmental management zone.
In the most recent proceedings in this process, Kelly Andrea Eslava, the ex-magistrate’s ex-partner, negotiated with the Prosecutor’s Office and became a witness for the prosecution. And four months ago, the Supreme Court of Justice opened a formal investigation and called into question the former Cundinamarca departmental controller and current congressman Néstor Leonardo Rico for allegedly having intervened directly before Judge Vargas for him to accept the claims of two lawsuits.
At the time, even as a magistrate, Vargas Bautista unofficially linked Corficolombiana to the lawsuit against the State for the CDT mess, arguing a relationship between the company and the matter, despite the fact that it did not appear in the initial lawsuit.
It is noteworthy that he linked the company to a process where an alleged error attributed to decisions is discussed adopted by judicial offices when the entity is not an administrator of justice. After the former magistrate left his office, the case passed to magistrate Clara Cecilia Suárez Vargas, who considered that there was a judicial error by the Superior Court of Bogotá by not validating (because they were annulled) the three CDT that tried to be collected ago more than two decades. This supposed error would have extended to the decisions adopted by the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court.
Consulted jurists pointed out that, in addition to the exotic nature of linking a private company such as jointly and severally responsible for an alleged error in the decisions of justice, the most recent ruling reopens, through a process of direct reparation, a debate that is not within the competence of the Administrative Court, as it deals with the validity of the titles and even pronounces itself on criminal matters related to crimes of fraud and falsehood against the same plaintiff.
Within the framework of the process, the Attorney General’s Office had already warned in November 2019 that “the judicial decisions regarding which the cause of the alleged damage is predicated were issued with arguments that cannot be classified as arbitrary since they correspond to the interpretation of the norms that regulate the securities and observed the probative material duly provided to the process, for which reason it was estimated that the claims do not have a vocation for prosperity.
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TIME – JUSTICE
**Corficolombiana is part of the business group to which Casa Editorial EL TIEMPO belongs.
