[David Trujillo]: In the previous episode we talked about an important character in this story: Luis Fernando Andrade. Let’s remember that Andrade directed the National Infrastructure Agency, ANI, the government entity that plans, hires, and executes megaprojects in the country. It was in that process of creating the ANI that Andrade learned about the Ruta del Sol II project, and later, because of an additional section of that highway, they took him to trial for allegedly benefiting Odebrecht and put him under house arrest.
At the beginning of 2018, while Andrade was in house arrest, Jorge Enrique Pizano, decided to reach out to him. This is Andrade.
[Luis Fernando Andrade]: I imagine he saw in me someone who was in a situation very similar to his. And so he asked me to help him because he was very scared.
[David]: Andrade’s wife, Teresa Chevres, was the one who met with Jorge Enrique.
[Teresa Chevres]: He was very worried that he was being followed and that something might happen to him.
[Luis Fernando]: And obviously he couldn’t trust at all the Colombian justice system, well, because the Attorney General’s Office was controlled by the person who was persecuting him, right? And I helped him get in touch with the United States authorities.
[David]: The day Jorge Enrique died, Juanita, his youngest daughter, went to the house where it all happened to pick up some documents. In her father’s room, Juanita found the clothes he had picked to wear that day.
[Juanita Pizano]: And there was his jacket. So I put on that jacket. I searched his pockets and he had, like, yes, papers, receipts, and I found the FBI agent’s card.
[David]: The card from someone at the FBI. It was very worn, as if it had been in that pocket for a while. A few days before, Jorge Enrique had told Juanita that he had already sent the evidence of the irregularities in Ruta del Sol II to the American authorities. Although he had been discreet, Juanita knew that Jorge Enrique had been talking with them for a few months, and that card most likely was from one of those contacts.
Despite the card’s condition, everything could be read clearly. It had the FBI logo, a phone number, a fax number, an address and an email. The card was from a special agent of the International Corruption Unit, the area dedicated to investigating violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The agent’s name was also clearly visible: Jared Randall. His name was mentioned a lot in different media in 2015 because he was the one who led the investigation of another major international corruption scandal: the FIFA or «FIFA Gate,» as the press called it.
Juanita didn’t know if it was to this particular agent, but she did know that her father had given them very important information.
[Juanita]: Obviously the Americans have many more tools to find information. But definitely my dad’s complaint was at least the basis for the Americans to find much more. I mean, what my dad found was like the tip of the iceberg. I mean, it had to be very serious, I don’t know. It had to be much more than what my dad could have imagined.
[David]: From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is La Ruta del Sol.
I’m David Trujillo. Episode 8: The Contact
The first meeting Teresa had with Jorge Enrique was around four or five months before his death. Since they knew they were being watched, they took precautions: the first was to meet in a neutral place, not at their homes.
[Teresa]: Since I knew how things were with cell phones, etc., I went there without a cell phone. He was… he had a hat and also had, like, sun glasses so he wouldn’t be recognized.
[David]: Jorge Enrique told her of the irregularities he knew about and the evidence he had been collecting for years, including recordings of high-ranking officials from Grupo Aval.
[Teresa]: I mean, he had made these recordings because he understood that something strange was going on and decided to record it to protect himself. So, he gave me the CDs and other photocopied documents. We listened to them, I translated them into English.
[David]: While she was making those translations, Teresa realized that what was there was important.
[Teresa]: The information he brought showed that… well, that Odebrecht hadn’t said everything it had done in Colombia.
[David]: Teresa and Andrade knew that this would likely interest the American authorities, so they organized a meeting between Jorge Enrique and their FBI contact, with whom they had already been talking before. I asked them if it was Jared Randall, the same agent from the card that Jorge Enrique’s daughter found in his jacket,, but they couldn’t give me more details. Everything in this investigation was –and still is– handled with great secrecy.
What we do know is that, after meeting two or three times with Teresa, Jorge Enrique agreed to meet with the FBI at the American embassy in Colombia. Teresa would accompany him and would be in charge of translating the conversation.
[Teresa]: If the FBI wanted to continue afterward, well, they would have an official translator and I wouldn’t be part of that.
[David]: Although Teresa couldn’t confirm the details of what was discussed there either, she told me that Jorge Enrique gave the FBI agent the same documents he had given her. She assured me that she didn’t accompany Jorge Enrique anymore, but she told me that the FBI agent was interested enough in the information to meet with him again. Andrade told me that Jorge Enrique didn’t get a formal offer of protection as a witness, because everything happened very quickly, but that he does believe they were in the process of considering it.
Jorge Enrique didn’t give Juanita, his youngest daughter, much detail about what he was discussing with the United States authorities. But she does remember that there was a moment when he started asking her to translate documents and emails that they sent him. She says that through one of those emails she found out that the FBI people were taking him seriously.
[Juanita]: The FBI agents told him that his safety was compromised and that they were going to do everything within their reach to take us all to the United States so that we would be protected under a Witness Protection Program.
[David]: The witness protection program. Although we asked the entity in charge of this program about this case, they said they couldn’t answer specific questions. But Juanita does remember seeing it in her father’s emails.
[Juanita]: According to the documents I saw, he was applying for that, and with that they were going to take him to the United States. I assume the rest of us too, well Carolina was already in Spain, Alejandro was already in Spain, but then my mom and I. So I didn’t have a suitcase ready, but in my head I already had sort of figured out what I was going to take in case we had to leave Colombia kind of quickly. Because the idea was to get him out of Colombia as soon as possible. And that’s what the messages from the American authorities said. But there wasn’t a specific date. Everything depended on how… on the visa process.
[David]: Juanita already had a visa. But Jorge Enrique and his wife had to get a tourist one through the conventional process because, according to Juanita, his contacts in the United States told him that the complaint was a secret matter. Nobody, not even at the embassy, could find out what was going on. That’s how they did it. They followed the recommendations, but in the end they were denied the visas. A State Department spokesperson told us that he couldn’t talk about specific cases either, so we can’t know the reasons for that decision, but Juanita suspects that the investigation against her father by the Attorney General’s Office had something to do with it.
[Juanita]: That was in September 2018, and it was a really hard blow for my dad. He became very depressed after that. And the FBI agent told us this doesn’t end the process; it just delays it a bit because they needed to figure out how to bring him.
[David]: Jorge Enrique agreed to move forward, but before signing and sending the formal complaint, he asked Juanita to read the whole document with her law-student eyes.
[Juanita]: Well, it was a very long document. I was 18 at the time when he asked me to read it, and I feel like I was really young, and I mean, I was in my third semester of law school — I didn’t know much yet. I mean, I know English, so I could read it, but there were many things that confused me. I really had to look everything up, and it caused me a lot of fear. I was literally crying, begging him not to put his name on it, to send it anonymously, because reading all this made me realize how serious the situation was. It’s not like I didn’t know it was serious, but it was a lot. And seeing the transcriptions of the recordings with Néstor Humberto, where he listed all the crimes— I don’t know why, but in English they sounded even worse.
[David]: Everything was overwhelming for her, but she helped her father in any way she could.
A few days before he died, Jorge Enrique told Juanita that he had already officially sent the complaint. He told her he had done it anonymously, and he also told her that Grupo Aval would not only know about the complaint, but also about the evidence supporting it.
[Juanita]: And my dad’s voice is in the evidence, because the recordings are there. Who else could it be? And all the emails, everything… even if they cross checked his name, I mean, they just look him up on a computer for one second and my dad’s name comes up. So it was very clear that he was the complainant, even if his actual name wasn’t written there, and that’s what made him most nervous.
[David]: Juanita remembers that moment with her father clearly.
[Juanita]: His eyes welled up. So I started crying too, out of nerves, because I didn’t understand anymore. I mean, the situation was already very tense, and I said to him: “Where do we have to go now? Do we need to hide? What are we supposed to do?” And he told me, “I don’t know anymore, we just have to stay still…”
[David]: And wait to see what would happen.
We’ll be right back.
We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
[David]: When Teresa heard from her husband that Jorge Enrique had died, she couldn’t stop crying.
[Teresa]: I mean, I had known him only briefly, but I had grown very fond of him. Because I truly thought he was a very good person, very decent, very thorough, who was suffering a lot. I mean, he reminded me a lot of Luis in that he was someone who had never let himself be pressured, and never would.
[David]: But that sadness turned into fear when, three days later, they learned of Alejandro’s tragic death.
[Teresa]: I mean, it wasn’t just being worried about the Pizanos — it was being worried about all of us. Because honestly, this was way too much for me. I never imagined I would be afraid that someone might kill me, or that I’d be talking to someone who was afraid that they were going to be killed and then actually died. I mean, I stepped into this surreal dimension — it was like living inside a Netflix series. It was… I prefer to watch things like this on TV, to read about them in books.
[David]: In the middle of all the confusion, Teresa called the FBI contact — the same one who had been speaking with Jorge Enrique — and told him everything that was going on. She wanted to let him know about the potential risk her husband and the rest of her family were facing. Almost two weeks after Alejandro’s death, the media published a letter that the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia had sent to the agency in charge of the prisons. Remember that Andrade was a U.S. citizen.
[Carlos Barragán]: It says that, given the recent news related to the Odebrecht case, they request special attention to the safety and physical integrity of Mr. Andrade and his relatives who live in the place of detention.
[David]: But one of the moments when Andrade and Teresa felt most nervous about their safety was when they watched the debate in Congress — the one we talked about in previous episodes. In that debate, the then Attorney General mentioned them by name and accused them of staging what he called “the most shameful conspiracy case against Colombian justice in history.”
[Luis Fernando]: If the Attorney General came out to declare that you, for example, were the biggest conspirator against Colombian justice in the country’s history, wouldn’t you feel afraid? Wouldn’t you feel like you were being threatened?
[Teresa]: I took that — and so did Luis — as a threat. And this time, a very real threat.
[David]: And they reached a conclusion.
[Teresa]: Yes, we decided we had to leave Colombia.
[David]: But before they could leave, they had to wait for the court’s decision regarding Andrade’s release. A full year of pretrial detention had already passed, and now they were going to decide whether to extend it or allow him to face trial in freedom. One week after that debate in Congress, the court ruled that the measure was no longer— and I quote — “adequate, necessary, or proportional.” And Andrade regained his freedom.
Even though it was good news for him and his family, the situation kept getting more and more tense. A few days after his release, the judge in his case reported that he was being harassed. This is what he said during a hearing:
[Judge]: I report harassment by aggressive motorcyclists. They stop in front of the vehicle I commute in — which is my personal vehicle — and I had never seen anything like this before.
[David]: Around that time, it also became known that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a formal investigation into Grupo Aval and Corficolombiana for possible corruption in Ruta del Sol II.
Amid all that avalanche of events, the uproar caused by the forensic analyses in the investigation of the Pizano deaths, and taking advantage of the fact that he no longer had any travel restrictions, Andrade put into motion the decision to leave with his family for the United States. They were going to travel on a private plane. But at the airport, right before takeoff, something happened.
[Luis Fernando]: A security vehicle came — I think it was from Colombian Immigration. They took me off the plane, the bodyguard who had come from the United States accompanied me, and basically what they wanted was to detain me at the airport.
Hours and hours went by, and nothing happened. The person who had to authorize the plane’s departure wasn’t answering the phone, so Teresa started making calls.
[Teresa]: So I got in touch with the people in the United States, who in turn contacted the key people in Colombia — the ones whose call the airport official did have to take — and then he finally gave the authorization for the plane to take off, and it took off.
[David]: Andrade and Teresa arrived in the United States, where they were able to feel much safer. A welcome ceremony was even held for him at the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs and he received a medal. But remember, the trial wasn’t over, and over time new charges were added and new proceedings were opened in other institutions. Andrade was a U.S. citizen, but he still had to follow the proceedings from there, attend virtual hearings, and respond to everything Colombian authorities requested.
We already know that one of his key witnesses in the case, Jorge Enrique, was gone — but there was someone else who was also very important. This was Rafael Merchán, who had served as Secretary of Transparency under the Santos administration, precisely when Andrade was director of the ANI. At that time, according to Andrade, the two of them had raised alarms to prevent Odebrecht from creating a cartel in the road contract bids, and they planned a mechanism to report any irregularities.
[Luis Fernando]: Rafael Merchán was always trying to do things by the book, with transparency. And his participation was very important to me because, since I’m accused of favoring Odebrecht, I wanted him to testify about the efforts he and I made to ensure that Odebrecht couldn’t control other participants in the bidding process.
[David]: But in late December 2018, a little more than a month after the Pizanos’ deaths…
[Jorge Alfredo Vargas]: Another witness in the Odebrecht case was found dead today.
[María Lucía Fernández]: It is Rafael Merchán, who served as Presidential Secretary of Transparency during the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos.
[Journalist]: The causes of death have not yet been clarified by the Institute of Forensic Medicine, which is still conducting studies on the body of the former official.
[Journalist]: Official sources indicated that his family had not heard from him since the past weekend, before Christmas. Merchán was scheduled to testify in favor of Luis Fernando Andrade in the case related to the bribery scandal involving the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht in Colombia.
[David]: Another one of Andrade’s witnesses had died.
[Luis Fernando]: I mean, it was a deep sadness and a horrible tragedy. And honestly, well, there’s the question of what really happened in that case, right? Because they investigated it very quickly, closed the investigation, and declared it was a suicide — and that was that.
[David]: Suicide… and also with cyanide. According to the Attorney General’s’s Office, Rafael Merchán committed suicide by consuming the same poison that killed Alejandro Pizano. But in this case, his family said it had nothing to do with his work as a public official. The Attorney General’s Office closed the investigation based on evidence that Merchán had purchased the poison.
A short break, and we’ll be back.
We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
So, one month after the Pizanos’ deaths, it became known that the U.S. Department of Justice had begun an investigation against Grupo Aval and its subsidiary Corficolombiana for irregularities in the construction of Ruta del Sol II. The company said from the very beginning that it would cooperate with the investigation.
And nothing more was known about it until August 2023, almost five years later, when the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission — the SEC — sanctioned Grupo Aval and Corficolombiana for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
To begin with, we need to be clear: yes, the investigation revealed that Corficolombiana facilitated the payment of more than 23 million dollars in bribes between roughly 2012 and 2015, and that the company — in order to avoid being prosecuted by the Department of Justice — accepted an agreement called a Deferred Prosecution Agreement. Remember that well: Deferred Prosecution Agreement.
But let’s go step by step. I know this is a complex, tangled legal process that needs to be examined carefully. So, to understand it better — and to understand the role Jorge Enrique Pizano might have played in all of this — I spoke with U.S. journalist Stan Alcorn.
[Stan Alcorn]: I’m an investigative journalist. And back in the United States, before coming to Colombia, I did a lot of investigative reporting, including on criminal cases in which the FBI was involved.
[David]: Stan has been investigating this story for months.
But to begin to understand what this Deferred Prosecution Agreement actually means, why would the United States be interested in a Colombian case?
[Stan]: Yes, so the short answer is that even though it’s a Colombian company, there is a connection to the United States.
[David]: Remember that Grupo Aval entered the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, and part of the bribe money moved through U.S. banks. In fact, the only concrete example in the agreement of one payment that went through those banks appears to be the same one Jorge Enrique mentioned in his interview with Noticias Uno: the 2.7-million-dollar payment.
[Stan]: But there’s also a longer answer that basically responds to the question: Why does a U.S. law against bribing public officials in other countries even exist? And that’s another story.
[David]: That story began in the 1970s, after the Richard Nixon administration and the major scandal known as Watergate, which ended in the president’s resignation. During the hearings about the case, it came out that several large companies had given suitcases full of cash to Nixon’s campaign, and that set off alarms for the authorities, who began investigating whether companies were making similar payments… in other words, bribes — and not just in the United States.
[Stan]: And it turned out that many large companies were routinely making big cash payments abroad to government officials — from prime ministers to police officials, for example. And at that time, in the ’70s, none of this was illegal. In fact, companies could deduct those bribes from their taxes.
[David]: So they decided to put a stop to it, and that’s how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — the FCPA — was created.
[Stan]: It is really, or is considered to be, the first law that made it illegal to pay bribes in foreign countries.
[David]: By 2018, when Jorge Enrique Pizano began talking to U.S. authorities, several things were happening: many international companies had entered U.S. stock exchanges — meaning there were more companies to investigate. Also, countries across the continent had created laws to fight international corruption and to cooperate with the U.S. authorities. And, of course, the Odebrecht case had exploded.
The FBI—particularly its International Corruption Unit—had a lot of work to do. Remember that this was the unit that appeared on the business card Juanita, Jorge Enrique’s younger daughter, found in the pocket of his jacket.
[Stan]: I spoke with Darryl Wegner, who was the head of the International Corruption Unit between 2015 and early 2018.
[Darryl Wegner]: “Really it was—we identified it as a need, as an investigative need, that came out of demand.”
[Stan]: And overall he told me that they were responding to the demand from the Department of Justice and the SEC, and that’s when the FBI began focusing more on this kind of case during those years.
[Wegner]: “It wasn’t a situation where we thought, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of corruption. We need to go meet that market.’ The market came to us.”
[David]: Wegner says it wasn’t a situation where they thought, “Hey, there’s a lot of corruption; we need to go looking for that market.” No. The market came to them. He also told Stan that in 2018 there were FBI agents in several countries, including Colombia, and that they had been invited by those governments. Although neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice nor the SEC answered our questions—and everything related to the Deferred Prosecution Agreement investigation is very secret— Wegner explained to Stan that these agents can conduct an initial interview with someone who approaches the Embassy to report something. Here’s Wegner again:
[Derryl]: “An agent who’s assigned to the embassy anywhere in the world can take a matter in as a first instance, as a whistleblower; someone can facilitate that.”
[Stan]: It’s very common for people who want to report something to go to a U.S. embassy and want to speak with someone—for example, with the FBI. But afterward, if there is interest, an agent with more specific expertise would be needed.
[Wegner]: “Every investigation has its own nuances and skill sets; someone who works child porn is very different from someone who works a corporate fraud.”
[David]: Translation: “Each investigation has its own nuances. Someone who works on child pornography is very different from someone who works on corporate fraud.” And that’s why, if it’s a case involving corruption, it must be handled by an agent from one of those units.
[David]: And do you think—or well, can we know—what role the agent on the card found by Pizano’s daughter might have had?
[Stan]: Well, yes. The card says Jared Randall, International Corruption Unit. And based on his LinkedIn, it seems that there is indeed a Jared Randall who was part of that unit during those years. We tried to contact him. He didn’t respond, but it makes sense that someone like him would handle interviews in a potential case related to the FCPA.
[David]: Now, about the offer to protect Jorge Enrique and get him out of the country, Stan was able to find out from his sources that, in general, yes, it is possible for the FBI to offer that kind of help in certain circumstances. Wegner confirmed it.
[Wegner]: “And the answer is yes, that is possible, right. But it all depends, and obviously I wouldn’t want to go into all that stuff. But certainly, like a core tenet—and I’m sure for your line of work as well—is you need folks to be comfortable bringing information to you. That if they do bring a concern, it does not lead to their destruction.”
[Stan]: According to Wegner, “it’s necessary for people to feel comfortable providing information to the FBI.” They need to make sure that doing so “won’t lead to their downfall.” But Wegner and also another FBI agent I spoke with told me that, in corruption cases, there are usually easier ways to protect someone than sending them out of the country. Because corruption isn’t like a murder—where if the only witness testifies in court, they’re putting their life in danger. Corruption doesn’t work like that. To carry out millions of dollars in bribes, there are documents, lawyers, bank accounts—there’s a lot of evidence. And investigators just need someone to tell them where to look.
[David]: And yes, although Jorge Enrique was the first to internally flag the irregularities, we can’t confirm exactly what role he played in the FBI’s investigation.
Do you think we can get closer—or try to understand—how important Jorge Enrique Pizano was in this investigation?
[Stan]: Well, to know know? No. Because none of the people and entities involved answered that question. But it’s obvious that Pizano was super important in the whole story, right? Reporting the contracts internally, talking to Colombian authorities, handing documents to the media. But regarding the U.S. investigation, the only thing I could say is that the Department of Justice formally opened its investigation one day after Alejandro Pizano’s death. So I can’t say for sure that one thing caused the other, but, well, the dates speak. It happened immediately after.
[David]: And now, going back to the Deferred Prosecution Agreement. What does it say? What does this document say?
[Stan]: Well, first of all, we have to say there were two agreements announced at the same time: one with the SEC.
[David]: The SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission… That document—which is not criminal but civil, as the SEC itself explains—states that Corficolombiana paid bribes through fake contracts, and that Grupo Aval included them in the accounting books it regularly submitted to that agency. For that reason, the SEC ordered Grupo Aval to never again violate the law, but also to pay 40 million dollars, which is the money the company obtained from those bribes plus interest, according to the document.
The other document, which is from the Department of Justice, is the actual Deferred Prosecution Agreement.
[Stan]: Which is more complicated, but also more interesting. That agreement includes a criminal charge against Corficolombiana for violating the FCPA.
[David]: For violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
[Stan]: In fact, it’s the same offense for which Odebrecht pleaded guilty in 2016. But the small yet important difference between the two cases is that here, Corficolombiana did not plead guilty. For now.
[David]: Exactly, for now, because the agreement is in effect until August 2026. And understanding that is very important because what the Department of Justice did was tell Corficolombiana that it would not take the next step—prosecuting them—as long as they complied with a long list of requirements.
Stan used a metaphor to explain it:
[Stan]: This is more or less like having a loaded gun: if Corficolombiana complies with the agreement, they won’t pull the trigger and take them to trial.
[David]: There are many requirements in the agreement, but according to the document, among them is paying another fine of 40 million dollars—which would be cut in half if Corficolombiana pays more than 20 million to a Colombian authority, the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, for a similar sanction. In other words, they have to pay fines totaling more than 80 million dollars: 60 to U.S. authorities and more than 20 to the Colombian one.
[Stan]: Another requirement is a whole series of internal measures and mechanisms to prevent something like this from happening again. And the company also has to acknowledge its responsibility—that is, it cannot deny that the bribes really took place and that they, Corficolombiana, do bear responsibility for those bribes. And if they comply with all these conditions, then after three years—that is, at the end of 2026—the Department of Justice commits to withdrawing the criminal charges against the company.
[David]: So, going back to Stan’s metaphor: if all of this is fulfilled, the U.S. authorities commit to putting down the gun they have pointed at the company. And it would be a decision made solely by the Department of Justice, one that couldn’t even be appealed.
[Stan]: If the Department of Justice decides that the company has not complied with the agreement, then they can easily prosecute Corficolombiana using all the information that has been provided to them. And given that the company has already admitted responsibility, a conviction would be practically guaranteed.
[David]: And how did the company communicate all of this at the time? Were there several statements? What did they say?
[Stan]: In general, the press releases emphasized heavily the fact that the investigation had been closed. Right? That’s the headline of the first press release: “After five years, the investigations by the U.S. government come to an end.”
[David]: Which is true, and some media outlets ran almost the same headline. But they didn’t focus on the sanction Corficolombiana accepted in order to avoid a harsher conviction.
So, to make it really clear: this agreement did not demonstrate the innocence of Corficolombiana, or of Grupo Aval, or of the people who worked there… not even of its owners, the Sarmiento family. In fact, the agreement specifies that it offers no protection whatsoever against the prosecution of any individual, regardless of their relationship with the company or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries. But the truth is that there was a lot of confusion.
[Stan]: There were many people—journalists, politicians, influential people—who at that moment said things like: “Oh, this guy is innocent,” or “this company is innocent.” And I think that is, well, to put it mildly, a very poor way of understanding this kind of agreement.
[David]: In the more than 50 pages of the document, they describe how the bribes were managed, the amount of money that moved, how the payments were made… They also mention people who offered and received those bribes. And there are some people in there who facilitated the bribes, but whose names are not given. Do you know why that happens?
[Stan]: Basically, this is an agreement with the company. They are accusing the company of having committed a crime; they are not legally accusing any individual person. And the Department of Justice’s policy says that, to protect the privacy and reputation of uncharged individuals, they do it this way—using generic descriptors like “Corficolombiana Executive” or “Colombian Official Number 2.”
[David]: One of those unidentified figures that drew the most attention from journalists and people following the case was the one referred to as “Colombian Official Number 3”—described literally as “a high-ranking official in the executive branch of the Colombian government approximately between 2010 and 2018,” who received bribes totaling 3.4 million dollars. To this day, it’s not known for certain who that senior official was.
At the time we finished this story, there was still one year left before the deadline given to Corficolombiana by the Department of Justice to comply with the agreement. We contacted them through their Director of Communications and Marketing, sent several questions, and she responded verbatim that “regarding this particular matter, Corfi refrains from issuing any explicit statement.”
In February 2025, President Donald Trump suspended the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for 180 days. The argument was that they were going to review ongoing investigations and already resolved cases because, for Trump, it is a law that sounds good on paper but often ends up preventing other countries from wanting to do business with U.S. companies. Although the reality is that nearly all the most significant sanctions have been imposed on foreign companies, not U.S. ones, this is what the president said the day he signed the executive order suspending the law:
[Donald Trump]: It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there legally, legitimately or otherwise, it’s almost a guaranteed investigation indictment. And nobody wants to do business with the Americans.
[David]: In June, the Department of Justice published a new guide on how to apply this law in accordance with President Trump’s instructions to—quote—“limit undue burdens on U.S. companies operating abroad and direct enforcement actions against conduct that directly undermines the national interests of the United States.”
It also became known that the Department of Justice reduced the number of attorneys working on matters related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But then…
Does this mean that these processes that are already underway around the world, like the one against Corficolombiana and Grupo Aval, will be closed or come to an end?
[Stan]: Well, during the pause that Trump ordered, there was indeed a review of cases, and some investigations and some agreements were closed before their expiration date. And it is also true that there is a lot of fear that perhaps we will see fewer of these kinds of investigations in the future. But so far, there is no sign that they plan to close or stop monitoring the Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Corficolombiana.
[David]: In the next episode…
[Néstor Humberto Martínez]: And I have kept a precise and methodical silence. But of course, I’ve been gathering a lot of information, right? I have acquired a lot of information. There’s nothing here that’s opinion.
[David]: Former prosecutor Néstor Humberto Martínez answers several questions.
Credits
La Ruta del Sol is a podcast by Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of the My Cultura podcast network from iHeart Radio.
Reporting and production for this episode were done by me, David Trujillo, and Stan Alcorn. The lead editor is Camila Segura, with additional editing by Daniel Alarcón, Silvia Viñas, and Eliezer Budasoff. Eliezer is the project manager. Fact-checking is by Bruno Scelza and Sergio Sebastián Retavisca. Camilo Vallejo handled legal review. Sound design and mixing are by Martín Cruz, with original music by Andrés Nusser. The graphic design and art direction for the series are by Diego Corzo.
Product development for La Ruta del Sol was led by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production was done by Nelson Rauda and Óscar Luna, with support from Lina Rincón and Samantha Proaño from the Radio Ambulante Studios audience team.
La Ruta del Sol was recorded at Fiona Records.
Many thanks to Ruti Smithline, Mark Pieth, and Mike Koehler for contributing their expertise to this investigation.
At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
We want to thank FLIP for its valuable support in the legal review of this production and for its security advice.
Carolina Guerrero is the executive producer of Central and the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.
You can follow us on social media as central podcast RA and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I’m David Trujillo. Thank you for listening.