Petro files criminal complaint against Álvaro Leyva for the coup plot

Colombian President Gustavo Petro denounced former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva Durán before the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday for treason, due to his apparent involvement in a seditious plan that sought to oust the president with the cooperation of the U.S. “Betrayal of the homeland has to be viewed from a clear context: that he [Leyva Durán] is a former foreign minister of this Government and he could not, as a former foreign minister of this Government, go to a foreign Government to ask them to exert pressure, to help bring about a rupture of the constitutional thread and President [Gustavo] Petro to leave his post in an abnormal way. That cannot be done”, argued before the press Petro’s legal representative, Alejandro Carrasco.

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Despite emphasizing that Washington was not involved in the former chancellor’s plan, the lawyer called to remember that one of the congressmen mentioned in the audios of Leyva Durán revealed, Carlos Antonio Giménez, has uttered insults and accusations lacking evidence against the head of state of Colombia.  “It must be taken into account the expressions that one of the American congressmen (sic) [Giménez] has repeatedly said, which is that the president is an addict, is sick, etcetera. And what evidence does the country have? What documents have evidenced that?”, he claimed.

In that regard, Carrasco pointed out that Colombia has no evidence and that the accusations of Leyva Durán and Giménez are based on the word of the former diplomat, who would be “bitter” (resentful) because Petro did not appoint his son to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

From this resentment, he detailed, the former chancellor would have used his role as the president’s representative in “some meetings” as the basis for the supposed incapacity of the ruler.

Scandal and Investigations

On the eve, the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office announced the beginning of an investigation into the case of the audios, in which other figures of local politics such as Vice President Francia Márquez and presidential pre-candidates Vicky Dávila and Miguel Uribe Turbay are mentioned. Both Márquez and Dávila have publicly distanced themselves from the attempted coup. In addition, the vice president demanded the intervention of the Public Ministry to clarify what happened. Meanwhile, Petro demanded explanations from both the vice president and the rest of the people Leyva Durán alluded to in the audios and, after detailing the steps that his former collaborator would have taken to remove him from office, urged the US Justice to investigate the eventual participation of politicians from that country in the coup plan. “There is a coup in progress and it must be investigated and request the US Justice to investigate“, he wrote on his X account.