The Liberal Party, following the capture of Senator Mario Castaño, issued a short statement on this process.
Given this, the bench stated that it trusts “in due process and in the procedure of justice.”
For its part, for the Prosecutor’s Office there is no doubt that it is a criminal gang formed around the leader who was re-elected to his third term, and who “by virtue of the indicative quotas made possible the financing of projects within entities of the national order and was unduly interested, together with his criminal group, in various projects and contracts.”
Likewise, This episode recalls what happened four years ago when the seat was decreed empty for the Liberal caucus, for the seat that the now-fugitive former congresswoman Aida Merlano would assume at the time. who was also captured before taking office as a senator of the Republic.
There are those who have already reacted on social networks regarding this arrest and assure that by July 20 this senator will not be sworn in. In addition, they emphasize that it is the price that the people behind the corruption must pay.
This is what he mentions on his personal Twitter account. the elected senator of the Esperanza Center, Ariel Ávila, who stated in his tweet that he himself had denounced this when he was working as a journalist.
“The liberal senator from the department of Caldas was captured in the last few hours, which comes to verify different complaints that I made when I was a journalist, investigator, in columns and videos. A large part of his team was captured for belonging or being part of a corruption network and it was a matter of days before Mario Castaño was verified. This would be the first empty chair in Congress to be installed on July 20,” Ávila tweeted.
On the other hand, former presidential candidate Enrique Gómez questioned whether the arrest of Senator Mario Alberto Castaño comes as a surprise to anyone.
“Who can be surprised by the capture of Mario Castaño? The lack of dignity and morals in the Senate reaches a level of impudence that in the next few days the captured person will come out furious to demand that his good name be repaired. #Incredible,” Gomez said in his post.
Likewise, the senator elected by the Historical Pact and social leader, César Pachón, said: “The Prosecutor’s Office captures Senator Mario Castaño for corruption. File of Rodolfo in Caldas. Surprised? That #Rodolfoneta will bring us many surprises. Nope?”.
The criminal operation to steal public resources by Senator Mario Castaño was exclusively denounced by SEMANAin March, when he published an investigation in which it was clear how the parliamentarian of the Coffee Region had articulated the entire criminal network.
But that was just the beginning of a series of tests that came out and were published on the way Castaño’s organization operated, of which The Prosecutor’s Office, with evidence, has already put nine of his cronies behind bars in Bogotá, Manizales and Chocó.
Those captured, alleged criminal associates of the recently captured Senator Castaño are: Lorena Cañón, Santiago Castaño and her sister, Claudia Marcela Castaño; Alejandro Noreña, Juan Sebastián Vargas, Daniela Ospina, Jeiler Javier Sánchez, Wílmar Herrera and Harvis Arturo Rentería.
According to investigations, Senator Castaño’s appetite for public resources is voracious. According to preliminary calculations, the gang would have embezzled at least 60,000 million pesos from the State, although it is believed that the figure might be higher.