An unusual operation to sell Colombian debt securities for about 6 billion dollars is the subject of controversy this Monday in the country, where opponents of the Government have already filed the first legal action to prevent it and demand that public assets be protected.
The operation was carried out last Friday by the Ministry of Finance, which directly sold Treasury Bills (TES) “for 6,000 million dollars, equivalent to 23 trillion pesos, approximately, to one of the largest foreign investors in the market”, according to a statement from that office.
TES are issued by the Ministry of Finance and administered by the Banco de la República (monetary authority) and allow the Government to obtain financing with an interest rate that can be fixed or variable.
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“This direct sale will imply a reduction in the Nation’s financing needs for the 2026 fiscal year,” the Ministry of Finance stated in the statement.
Economists’ Criticisms
This transaction has raised doubts and criticism from experts because the statement does not detail, for example, how the operation was structured, who is the foreign investor who bought the TES, the rates, commissions and other conditions.
Former Minister of Finance and pre-presidential candidate Mauricio Cárdenas considered it “very serious” and “a disaster” that the Government has placed “23 billion pesos to a private investor in the most opaque conditions”.
“That’s taking us back 25 years. We had a transparent, deep capital market, where you know at what terms, at what rates the amounts are placed, here (it was done) to a private investor without telling us anything about the rates, without even telling us who it is,” Cárdenas stated on his X account.
Also present with Cárdenas was economist and former minister Mauricio Santa María, who described as “serious” that “trust in the Colombian debt market is broken” by this operation with which, he said, “someone is going to get very rich”.
“For the first time, our debt buyers are upset by a dark, non-transparent operation that arises from great desperation given the incredible fiscal situation that Colombia is experiencing,” he added.
Lawsuit before the Council of State
Given the doubts left by the operation, presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, from the far-right movement Defensores de la Patria, announced today that he filed before the Council of State (highest court of administrative litigation) a “popular action for the protection of collective rights to public patrimony and administrative morality”.
“The government of Gustavo Petro Urrego sold, directly —without public auction—, debt securities (TES) for 23 trillion pesos (about 6,000 million dollars) to a single unknown foreign investor” which, according to experts, the demand indicates, “would be like asking for a huge loan behind closed doors, avoiding the competition that ensures better conditions.”
As a precautionary measure, De la Espriella and lawyer Germán Calderón España, who accompanies him in the lawsuit, requested to “provisionally suspend the legal effects of the act, business or direct contract” and, as a second step, to terminate it.
Presidential candidate Claudia López, from the center-left, also criticized this operation and pointed out that the case of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), where the biggest corruption scandal of the Petro government was incubated, “pales in comparison to this theft from TES armed in December”.
