Aura Restrepo reappeared, the former sentimental partner of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, the capo of the Cali Cartel.
The woman, who carried out a clandestine relationship for eight years with one of the most recognized drug traffickers in the country, and who today has a life far removed from her past, He questioned the role of former president Ernesto Samper when talking regarding corruption, morality and drug trafficking.
Aura, business administrator and mother of three children, who had nothing to do with drug traffickers, was upset because Samper said on Twitter: “The country awaits urgent explanations from Federico Gutiérrez regarding his links with the Envigado Office through the Mr. Villegas, are definitive to evaluate their levels of ethical competence and what might be expected from their management of criminal organizations.”
Restrepo told SEMANA that it is not the first time that she has challenged the former president. “I do it every time I see his posts, especially when they have to do with that hypocritical position of passing himself off as a saint and not. For me, Samper is the personification of corruption in Colombia, everything that should not be”, said.
He pointed out that it is difficult to remain silent regarding Samper’s morality through his social networks.
“Attacking a presidential candidate saying that he is from the Oficina de Envigado, when Samper received money from the Cali Cartel, from all the cartels, from Norte del Valle, he received millions of dollars. That is vulgar, he has no presentation that he publishes that kind of trills “he highlighted.
“The Rodríguez Orejuela sent and sent millions to different politicians, a presidential campaign does not move only by sending the candidate. You have to send it to the regional leaders, to the local ones, they sent publicity, t-shirts, posters. Santiago Medina was given five boxes, each containing a million dollars wrapped in gift paper,” he said.
“I heard Gilberto Rodríguez speak with Samper on the phone, I saw boxes of dollars sent for his campaign, I know of the commitments he made and might not fulfill “he added.
That is why, following more than two decades, Aura qualifies Samper as one of the most annoying people when it comes to reading.
“Just seeing it, reading it, listening to it, is torture. How can a person continue with that cynicism and deny what is obvious and what everyone knows? He seems too cheeky to me,” he said.
But why this level of anger once morest Samper? She clarifies that it is not once morest him but with his “brazenness, lies and cynicism”.
“It is not because he has not fulfilled the commitments, in fact I paid jail time and Gilberto Rodríguez was told that if he testified once morest Samper they would release me. It did not cross my mind that he was going to do that, it is impossible that he did it because if he did it they would be the first to suffer. It was not that. The problem is that Samper is so brazen to continue denying and talking regarding morality.
For this reason, he believes that the former liberal president should withdraw from politics and isolate himself from public opinion. “How can he keep showing his face and talking regarding drug trafficking?” He asked himself.
Aura reiterated that she never saw Samper with the Rodríguez Orejuela family because she barely knew Gilberto, her “great love” -as she remembers him-, they had to hide because extradition was imposed once morest drug traffickers.
“The politicians we saw were the intermediaries, including Santiago Medina,” he said.
Medina, for example, was used by Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela as a jury in the National Tourism Reign in 1998 so that Aura, who competed in said contest, lost.
The capo’s strategy was for Medina to prevent his beloved girlfriend from becoming queen because he would have to travel to Thailand, an unthinkable idea for the drug trafficker, who was in love with the slender woman at the time. Aura was a princess.
The woman who accompanied the capo in hiding and who enjoyed the money little or nothing because she did not have the freedom for eccentricities, separated seven months ago and today she is trying to start a food business in the center of the country.
In addition, she mixes her time in writing her second book on the women of drug trafficking, in addition to other stories that were pending in her first text entitled ‘I don’t want to be silent anymore’.
Since he was released, Restrepo says that he has not spoken to Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela once more.
She sent him a video to the Colombian prison where he was held before being extradited to the United States. He asked her to visit him, but she was already pregnant. The meeting was pending with the sole objective of healing the wounds.
Aura believes that Gilberto Rodríguez, who is serving a sentence in a maximum security prison in the United States, does not want to know regarding her.
In fact, in her book, the woman confessed that her love for Gilberto Rodríguez was so great that she was unfaithful to him, seeking to find another love that would make her forget her past, get out of the despair in which she was and have a quiet life as which he currently enjoys. “It’s not something to be proud of, I had never been unfaithful before and I was never following, but I needed to hold on to someone to be able to leave him.”.
Her past wounds have not healed and she would like, one day, to meet Gilberto Rodríguez as a friend, close the chapter and leave everything behind. However, it will be impossible. Restrepo does not have a visa and will have to postpone his intention.
“He was the love of my life, I faced the world for him, my family, I hid, in the middle of the war with Pablo Escobar I accompanied him, that is done for love,” the woman concluded in dialogue with SEMANA.
