Prosecutor Francisco Barbosa announced from Medellín that nine people will be linked to criminal proceedings, as a result of the contingency that occurred in the Hidroituango megaproject in 2018, in which the hydroelectric plant was at risk, as were hundreds of families located downstream.
After an evaluation of the technical reports, the accusation entity found elements to request imputation hearings once morest the visible heads who led the initiatives for contracting and managing the permits to advance in the construction works.
The list includes the former governor of Antioquia, Luis Alfredo Ramos Botero; the former mayor of Medellin, Fabio Alonso Salazar Jaramillo; the former director of the Institute for the Development of Antioquia, Álvaro de Jesús Vásquez Osorio, and the former general manager of Public Companies of Medellín (EPM), Federico José Restrepo Posada.
They must answer for the crime of improper interest in the execution of contracts, given that, presumably, on March 30, 2011, the agreement to finance the construction of the Pescadero-Ituango power generator was handed over through direct negotiation with EPM. .
In the opinion of the investigators of the Prosecutor’s Office, “this action would have violated essential principles of public procurement provided for in the Constitution and different regulations,” reads the file that he met WEEK.
Two other people will have to answer for alleged inconsistencies in the management of the environmental license for the construction of the temporary diversion tunnel of the Cauca River: Jesús Ignacio Echavarría Mejía, representative of Hidroituango before the ANLA, and Hernán Sánchez Cruz, professional of the Social Environmental Directorate and Sustainability of the Ituango Project.
The files compiled by the judicial authorities recognized that in 2015 the construction of the system began, without having the authorization of the environmental authorities. In other words, they had to modify the permit that they were initially given, but they did not do so, contrary to what the then Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development required.
“With presumably false information, a first request for expansion was filed with the National Environmental Licensing Authority on December 22, which was denied. Subsequently, a second request was submitted, on July 5, 2016, which was finally approved,” added the prosecution body.
I mean, False documents would have been presented to hide the works that were being carried out without the approval of the ANLA. Consequently, they must answer for the lack of ideological falsehood in a public document and procedural fraud.
Finally, the Hidroituango contractors will also be linked to the process for allegedly entering into a contract without complying with legal requirements and embezzlement by appropriation in favor of aggravated third parties.
Properly, in this box appears the Vice President of Power Generation Projects of EPM, Luis Javier Vélez Duque; the executive vice president of Diversion Projects of EPM, Wilson Chinchilla Herrera, and the director of development of the hydroelectric plant, Álvaro León Ospina Montoya.
This accusation is supported by the complementary works carried out by the CCC Ituango Consortium due to the failures that occurred in the transit of the project, generated by geological and geotechnical problems that were not anticipated by the technical studies contracted by EPM.
“This contract, which amounted to more than 127,100 million pesos, was made through bilateral modifications to the original contract, in December 2015. This process, apparently, did not have sufficient and adequate geological studies; In addition, the design was not defined, nor was the environmental license modified, among other possible omissions, ”the Prosecutor’s Office detailed.
It should be noted that the prosecution body decided to concentrate all lines of investigation on possible irregularities in the contracting and management of Hidroituango in a specialized chamber delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice, “with the purpose of unifying criteria and having a comprehensive vision of the process”, concluded prosecutor Francisco Barbosa.
