Andrés Felipe Arias prefers to be prudent. He does not want to jump for joy until he sets foot in his apartment, located in the north of Bogotá, where he will serve the rest of his sentence for the Agro Income Security scandal, as decided by the Second Sentence Execution Court following reviewing that he served more than half of his 17-year sentence in a prison.
On the other end of the phone, Arias, from the Cavalry School, where he remains confined, asked Catalina Serrano, his wife, for a favor: not to get excited until the dream becomes a reality and he, following more than 10 years of lockdown, enter through the door of your apartment. She, who cried as soon as he confirmed the court decision in favor of her husband, understood it, although she is more optimistic. “It can’t be, it can’t be, what joy, what emotion,” he said on the other side of the line.
Arias is excited, but is aware that It has been years since he received positive news in the midst of the stormy Agro Income Security scandal, that ended up spoiling his dream of being a presidential candidate and, incidentally, frustrated his successful professional career.
They are waiting for you at home. Catalina advances small adaptations in the house because from this weekend she will no longer be alone with Eloisa and Juan Pedro, her two minor children. Andrés Felipe, with whom they stopped sharing when he was captured by US justice in the United States, in the middle of a cinematographic operation, will be back.
Catalina – current commercial director of an American company – vacates the personal study of the Colombian economist because she wants him to find his own space. From now on, she will work from her room because he promises to dedicate himself to writing while in family confinement.
They do not want reception celebrations because the family prefers an intimate moment with Andrés Felipe. It has been more than five years that they are not together at home. Martha Sonia Leyva, the former minister’s mother, will be present. Rodrigo Arias, his father, will be missing from the intimate family photo because he died in January 2022.
This Wednesday, Serrano accompanies her husband at the Cavalry School to pack her suitcase: books, clothes, some weights and gym equipment that allowed her to burn time and fight once morest loneliness and confinement. And then, They will dedicate themselves to waiting for the judge’s decision to end up in the hands of Inpec and the former Minister of Agriculture officially goes to his home.
Andrés Felipe Arias ―who was deported from the United States on July 12, 2019 following being in that country for five years― will remain locked up, but next to his family. From his house he will dedicate himself to waiting for the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice that will decide whether or not he overthrows the ruling that sentenced him to 17 years in prison for Agro Income Security.
