[David Trujillo]: This story begins on a very sad Sunday for the Pizano Ponce de León family. It was November 11, 2018, the peak of a family tragedy that had been going on for several years. The family had gathered at their house in Subachoque, a town in Colombia about an hour from Bogotá, to mourn the father, who had died in that same house three days earlier. Juanita Pizano, one of the daughters, was there. At the time, she was 19 years old.
[Juanita Pizano]: We were having a family moment, really beautiful, actually: remembering my dad and sharing stories and laughing and crying a little.
[David]: Juanita’s father, Jorge Enrique Pizano, was 57 years old and had a diagnosis of lymphatic cancer that they had managed to treat, but one day before his birthday, according to the official report, an unexpected heart failure ended up killing him.
That November 11th, Juanita was with her mother, who lived with Jorge Enrique in that house and who found him collapsed on the bathroom floor on Thursday morning. Her older siblings, Carolina and Alejandro were also there: as soon as they received the news, they had traveled from Spain, where they lived. And Alejandro’s wife, who was pregnant at the time.
With the travels, the funeral, the cremation in Bogotá, and meetings with friends and other family members, they hadn’t been able to have an intimate moment to talk. In fact, this was the first time they all went to the house. Finally, they had a moment to feel calmer… or at least to share their grief in peace.
[Carolina Pizano]: We arrived there. So we started looking at all of my dad’s things. And, yes, I was the first one to go upstairs.
[David]: She is Carolina Pizano, Juanita’s older sister. She’s 7 years older than her. Carolina remembers that that day, while her brother’s wife stayed in the kitchen preparing lunch, the rest of them started walking around the house.
[Carolina]: So we took my dad’s watches and other things, yes, we were each like, taking things, or we saw them and left them there.
[David]: Then, the three children and their mother went to the main bedroom, where Jorge Enrique used to sleep.
[Juanita Pizano]: Alejandro starts saying, I should dress the way my dad tells me. And he put on some sneakers, the sneakers we gave my dad for his last Father’s Day that we gave him sneakers…
[David]: Then Alejandro approached Jorge Enrique’s desk, which was in the same room. There were still some papers, like a to-do list. Alejandro started to take a look at what was there.
[Carolina]: So that’s when Alejandro calls me and says Caro, look.
[David]: He showed her a photo of her that their dad had put in a picture frame.
[Carolina]: And for me it was a… it’s a very important photo because it’s like the moment where I overcame all my traumas, yes, like all my depression. That my dad had that photo there was super significant to me. And next to it was a bottle.
[David]: A small flavored-water plastic bottle with a green cap — a personal-sized one.
[Juanita]: And my mom said, ‘oh, your dad’s waters,’ because my dad was always so thirsty. She said it was because he had had cancer, but I don’t really know. He was extremely thirsty all the time, so there were always those green-caped bottles around.
[Carolina]: From what I remember –I have no idea if I’m right or wrong– it was quite full. Yes, I mean, obviously it wasn’t new, but it was at least… at least three quarters full. And my brother grabs the bottle, tastes it and says, «What is this disgusting thing?” But I thought well it tasted bad to him and that’s it. Yes, like it must be spoiled.
[David]: But the taste had to be more than bad, because Alejandro’s reaction was not exactly one of disgust. It seemed more like terror. He left the bottle on the desk and ran to the bathroom, desperate.
[Juanita]: But he was screaming. He was terrified, completely panicked. And he started trying to spit in the bathroom.
[David]: It didn’t work. Alejandro came out staggering and started going down the stairs as best he could. At that moment, Juanita grabbed the bottle. She brought it close to her mouth.
[Juanita]: I wasn’t going to be so stupid as to do exactly the same thing, to take a sip, but I did want to at least perceive what was there. And I didn’t even have to completely turn the bottle over. Just putting my mouth there I felt the most disgusting and bitter taste I’ve ever felt in my life. I mean, I can only describe it as death.
[David]: When Alejandro reached the kitchen, he fell to the floor and started convulsing. His mother, not understanding what was happening, tried to lift him up and help him somehow.
[Carolina]: “My mom tried to make him vomit by sticking her finger in his mouth, but she used her thumb. And I said No! I pulled her back and used my index finger to make him throw up , but my brother was already rigid — so he bit me and I still have a scar here.”
[David]: They quickly got him in the car to take him to the nearest health post. Before leaving, Carolina ran upstairs and grabbed the bottle.
[Carolina]: I’ve watched many medical shows. If they know what he took, they know how he can be saved. So I went and grabbed the bottle and got in the back of the car, in… in the trunk. With that door open and everything. And the door closed with the bump of going downhill at full speed. I think that’s when I passed the bottle to my sister.
[David]: After a few minutes they got to the health post. Alejandro was unconscious. The entrance to the place was empty, there was no one to receive him. They started screaming for help until someone came out and put him on a stretcher. Alejandro was losing his vital signs. Respiratory arrest was imminent and that place wasn’t equipped to save him. He had to be taken immediately to a larger hospital, which was more than 40 minutes away.
[Juanita]: They put him in an ambulance and there I handed the bottle to someone in the ambulance and told them: this is what he drank. And then my mom got in the ambulance and the rest of us were in the car behind the ambulance and we were going to the Facatativá hospital, but he lost vital signs.
[David]: They weren’t going to make it. The ambulance stopped in the middle of the road, in front of another smaller hospital, and the paramedics started trying to resuscitate him: 30 chest compressions, two mouth-to-mouth breaths… And so on, several times. From outside, the others watched how the ambulance moved up and down in dozens of resuscitation attempts. Like that for half an hour.
[Juanita]: And a crowd of people started gathering around us, and we just cried. And we screamed at Alejandro to stay with us.
[Carolina]: And there I started screaming: How can people believe in God? I mean, I couldn’t believe that my dad had died three days ago and my brother was dying now. I felt such hatred for God. I said he can’t exist if this happens.
[David]: But there was nothing else to do. He had died. Alejandro was 31 years old.
[Carolina]: And then, everything collapsed. My mom was screaming. They had to sedate her. Life breaks in two and I think it breaks into a thousand pieces. That’s why for me, death isn’t the death of the person, it’s the death of… of everyone who was around the person, because you stop being who you were. Many parts of yourself change.
[Juanita]: And I couldn’t believe it. The worst moment of our lives, what does this mean? I mean, my mom was just screaming, obviously like a madwoman. They had to give her tranquilizers. Everything was absolute and total chaos.
[David]: But in the midst of the chaos and shock they were all in, Juanita remembers seeing the bottle.
[Juanita]:They took it out of the ambulance and some nurses had it. But I don’t know. I mean, I only saw it passing by, but I don’t… I don’t know. That was the last time I saw the bottle.
[David]: Two days later the autopsy results came out: cyanide poisoning.
From Central series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is La Ruta del Sol.
Alejandro Pizano’s death left many questions. In the days that followed, the case became increasingly tangled until it ended up turning the attention of an entire country toward a very large corrupt machinery that operated not only in Colombia, but in several countries in the region.
I’m David Trujillo. Episode 1: The Bottle.
[David]: Whether a substance is toxic depends on many factors, but the amount to which the body is exposed is the most important. The famous phrase «the dose makes the poison» is true. So much so, that it’s surprising to know that, for example, consuming cyanide, the most famous poison in crime stories, is more common than you’d think. It’s found in apple and pear seeds. Also in the fleshy interior of peach, cherry, plum, and apricot pits. Spinach, almonds, soy and even yuca contain this substance. It doesn’t kill us, of course, but only because the doses are very, very low.
But you shouldn’t be too confident either. Low doses of cyanide can be lethal. Just taking orally between 150 and 200 milligrams, less than a pinch –what you can grab between two fingers–, or even breathing the gas it exudes, can cause effects to start appearing immediately: headache, nausea, tachycardia, chest pain, difficulty breathing. At that point, the substance is already leaving cells without the oxygen necessary to produce energy and that starts to cause a very rapid cascade of deadly effects.
It starts with central nervous system dysfunction, which is reflected in loss of consciousness and convulsions. Then the body goes into a coma, there’s cardiovascular failure, respiratory arrest and brain damage. All of that lasts between 10 minutes and an hour, when the person dies. After that, some signs that experts can detect in the body remain: like reddish spots on the skin, cherry-colored gastric mucosa and sometimes a smell of bitter almonds.
In Alejandro Pizano’s case, his family had seen the immediate reaction to drinking from the bottle. That’s why his sister Carolina had grabbed it, to take it and have its contents examined. Even before the autopsy results came out, it was clear that that’s what had killed him. But, for his other sister, Juanita, that confirmation, had created new doubts rather than giving them that one certainty.
[Juanita]:The fact is that my dad’s death was no longer of natural causes. I mean, at least the question existed of what happened to dad? It couldn’t be natural causes, because who put that in there? I mean, everything started to become a bit dark.
[David]: And even more so knowing that for almost a decade, their dad had been dedicated to collecting very sensitive information.
[Juanita]: My dad knew many things that no one else knew.
[Carolina]: Yes, my dad was a very curious person and with that curiosity which was so… so positive, right? Like I want to know how this works so I go and ask.
[Juanita]: He had a great capacity to store information in his brain that we… never understood.
[David]: Juanita and Carolina’s father, as we already said, was named Jorge Enrique Pizano. He was a civil engineer recognized in his field who had worked in private companies and in Colombia’s public sector. He got along with people. Juanita describes him as someone very extroverted.
[Juanita]: My dad’s personality was totally captivating, I mean, extremely charismatic. Running an errand in Bogotá, going to the mall or something was also… It caused me a lot of anxiety because my dad would run into 50 people per square meter and had to greet each and every one.
[David]:Very different from Juanita herself, who since childhood has always been more shy and reserved with everyone, even with Jorge Enrique.
[Juanita]: But as I was growing up my dad always sought to have a close relationship with me, even if, let’s say, I didn’t want to and not because I didn’t love him deeply, but because sometimes it was very hard for me to tell him or in general, express how I felt.
[David]: But he always found a way to show her his love without pressuring her, with small but very significant acts. Sometimes he would leave books or notes in her room.
[Juanita]: Pretty concise notes, but I think very heartfelt, that maybe only he and I understood perfectly what was behind them.
[David]: With his other daughter, Carolina, he also had a good relationship. What she remembers most about him was his sense of humor.
[Carolina]:My dad had… had a very fine humor, right? And very… he was, he was too funny. So he was always making jokes about everything.
[David]: Although sometimes they argued, especially because Jorge Enrique was very strict and pressured her to do things the way he thought was best.
[Carolina]:My dad always worked very hard, he was very methodical, very organized. It was very, very much his personality, and the thing is… My dad always said: “things should be done well or not done at all”.
[David]: And with that idea of doing things right he accepted a public position in 2008. They named him manager of Bogotá’s Aqueduct. There he would have to follow the goals of the new mayor’s office, which consisted, among other things, of expanding water service to some areas of the city and decontaminating the Bogotá river.
At that time, Carolina and Juanita didn’t understand very well what their dad did. They imagined it had something to do with pipes, water and building construction, but what became very clear to them very quickly was that it wasn’t an easy job.
[Carolina]: Because he had the whole issue of unions. Many people came to ask him for contracts. The issue of bidding. And so many people came to request positions.
[Juanita]: There, I guess I could understand that my dad’s work wasn’t so much pipes and buildings, but more management.
[David]: And political, especially political…
That job ended up being torture for Jorge Enrique, and it didn’t take long for him to start complaining.
[Carolina]: My dad was dying of boredom, he didn’t want to be there anymore, he wanted to run away from there.
[David]: Because the situation reached the point of becoming dangerous.
[Juanita]: I remember him saying that he wanted to resign and that he wanted to resign and once I saw him tell my mom that he wanted to leave the Aqueduct because he was being threatened.
[David]: Juanita, who was between nine and ten years old, doesn’t remember very well if it was her mother or who it was, but at that age she was given a very clear order: she couldn’t answer the phone.
[Juanita]: I saw my dad quite tense and I knew there were people who had been making threatening calls to my dad. I felt panic, but well I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t do anything, especially because I wasn’t supposed to know what was happening and I wasn’t supposed to understand because I was very young, even if I did know.
[David]: Around that time, Jorge Enrique got an opportunity to work in the private sector that really motivated him. It was with the civil engineer and banker Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, one of the richest men in Colombia and owner of Grupo Aval, one of the largest business conglomerates in the country… and in Latin America. He owns several banks. Not only in Colombia, but also in other countries in the region: Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente, Banco Popular, and AV Villas, among others. He also has investments in agro-industrial and mining businesses, and owns pension funds, brokerage firms, ATM networks, energy infrastructure companies, luxury hotels, and several media outlets, including El Tiempo, one of the most important newspapers in Colombia. His conglomerate covers practically every strategic sector of the Colombian and regional economy.
Among all the activities of Grupo Aval, there’s also investment in construction projects of different sizes, public and private, like housing complexes, bridges, highways. Some of those constructions, like a cancer research center and a building at the National University, have been donated by Sarmiento Angulo himself through his foundation. Jorge Enrique had already met him at some point while he was at the Aqueduct.
[Carolina]:For my dad he was like a great man, he was someone he deeply admired. So Sarmiento told my dad one day that he would like my dad to work with him. Yes, like he was welcome whenever he wanted. The next day my dad went with his best outfit, with his résumé and told him: Look, here is my résumé. Of course, Luis Carlos received the résumé and passed it along and said something like find a position for him.
[David]: Within the entire conglomerate there was an open position at Corficolombiana, the company in charge of financing and investing in all kinds of businesses, including construction ones. Not long before, the consortium formed by a Corficolombiana company called Episol and two other partners had won a very important public-private contract: the construction of the second section of the so-called Ruta del Sol, a highway of more than 1,000 kilometers that would connect the center of the country with the Atlantic coast. That second section, known as Ruta del Sol II, would cover more than 500 kilometers and, according to the original contract, would cost over one billion dollars at the exchange rate of the time.
The position available for Jorge Enrique was that of controller, which is basically an auditor.
[Juanita]:Being a controller means ensuring that payments are compliant with the law in terms of contracts and in terms of money laundering.
[David]: In other words, review the consortium’s accounts and verify that payments met international anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism standards. This means he would have to ensure the project’s transparency. It wasn’t the job he dreamed of– he actually wanted to be closer to Sarmiento Angulo– but it was the best option at that moment.
[Carolina]: And he accepted the position because he said ok, well, you have to start somewhere, right? This is like getting closer to that person I admire.
[David]: Jorge Enrique started his new job in August 2010. Despite everything, he was enthusiastic. His personality fit perfectly with the job he had been hired to do, and that’s why he came to review everything in great detail. Very quickly he noticed suspicious things in the documents.
[Carolina]:My dad starts to notice that there are inconsistencies, that there are things that don’t add up, that there are payments that… where does this come from.
[David]: After two weeks of being in his job, Jorge Enrique wrote a report that the media outlet Cuestión Pública later revealed. In it he warns that the consortium was making payments without signature control from whoever ordered them. Those payments were made from Corficolombiana by an executive from the other partner company in the project without authorization to sign them.
[Carolina]: But of course, my dad was initially very naive. Yes, he was very naive because he thought it’s an error, there are errors, yes, they have to be fixed.
[David]: But so many errors couldn’t be normal. Each time he found more incriminating things.
[Carolina]: Fake companies, fake signatures. Corruption, pure and simple corruption.
[David]: We’ll be right back.
[David]: We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
So… Jorge Enrique Pizano was so methodical and obsessed with order, that during his work as controller he dedicated himself to saving every document he reviewed, every report he made and every email he sent. According to Cuestión Pública’s investigation, one of those emails had the subject «Higher payments» and he sent it in November 2013 to two consortium executives. There he denounced payments of invoices for, and I quote here, «higher and different values than those contracted without having the corresponding support.» They were big alerts, but he didn’t receive any response.
At home, Jorge Enrique didn’t talk about the details of his work, but Juanita remembers that he constantly complained about his bosses’ lack of diligence, their lack of communication.
[Juanita]: He talked a lot about how they were ignoring him. He said: I tried to talk to this person or I had this conversation with this person about these payments and… and damn they don’t do anything.
[Carolina]: He would get home visibly upset sometimes and would say that they hadn’t told him no… that yes, like they hadn’t given him the information, but initially it was like that typical annoyance of the man who, who… or the woman who arrives home loaded from work. Over time it became much more complex because my dad started to realize that this was serious and that many people already knew.
[David]: In 2014 the initial contract for the highway was modified to include a new 80-kilometer section, with an additional cost of more than 500 million dollars at the exchange rate of the time, and that construction was assigned to the same consortium. Jorge Enrique later realized, among other things, that more than 5 million dollars had been paid, at the exchange rate of the time, for land management related to that project—to a company that, just a year earlier, had been dedicated to textile manufacturing.
By 2015, alerts about irregular contracts flooded the project, but when Jorge Enrique demanded information to write his reports, they denied it to him.
[Juanita]: So he had to start going directly to the treasury to ask for the payments that had gone out from Corficolombiana. He had to start begging for this information, even searching almost in the trash cans. So he talked about all this quest for information, because they were no longer giving it to him. And that terrible angst of no longer having anything to do day to day, because they weren’t letting him do his job.
[David]: In June of that year, as Cuestión Pública also revealed, he sent an executive summary to his bosses. In it he asked them to apply internal anti-money laundering regulations urgently. He told them that they were paying invoices without, and I quote here, «respective reports or support of deliverables.» But nobody responded.
[Juanita]:Obviously he looked quite stressed. He suffered a lot from stomach aches from literal stress gastritis. I mean, the stress was getting worse and I think it was also a generalized stress for everyone, a tension that grew and grew. None of us could handle the stress. I even stopped eating. No, I mean, my mom looked sick. My mom couldn’t sleep, I think she couldn’t eat either. And that also caused me anxiety and fears.
[Carolina]: I, on the other hand, have always been quite avoidant, so I prefer to look the other way while things get settled. I never imagined that things were so serious. I lived in this privileged girl bubble, absolutely pathetic. So I said no, but my dad… obviously nothing is going to happen. Yes, like… Yes, nothing is going to happen, nothing is going to happen. That’s what I thought.
[David]: But Jorge Enrique didn’t think the same. He wasn’t going to sit and wait. He tried one last option. He then sought out people from the closest circle of Sarmiento Angulo, the owner of Grupo Aval. He wanted to tell them about all the irregularities and have them alert him directly about what was happening. Among those people he sought was the company’s legal advisor: Néstor Humberto Martínez, an economist and commercial lawyer who had been working with the multimillionaire for several years in different important businesses, like this one of Ruta del Sol II.
[Juanita]: The Sarmientos really trusted Néstor Humberto and it was already the last way my dad could say well, I did everything to give this information to these guys and now they’ll see what they do with it.
[David]: Besides being a recognized lawyer, Néstor Humberto Martínez was a quite experienced politician. At that moment when Jorge Enrique sought him out, Martínez had just left a very important political position two months earlier: Minister of the Presidency. For a year, Martínez had functioned as a liaison between the president and other ministries and other state powers… a position so powerful that some called him super minister.
Jorge Enrique sought out Martínez because of the position he had in Sarmiento Angulo’s conglomerate, yes, but also because he trusted him… he knew him from before: his son Alejandro had been best friends with Martinez’s son since they were very young in school.
Jorge Enrique met with him in August 2015. There, he told him in detail what he had already told his bosses and handed over written evidence of what he had found in those five years: copies of the documents, fake contracts, unsupported expenses, and the reports he had written.
[Juanita]: My dad gave these printed reports directly to Néstor Humberto Martínez, and Néstor Humberto Martínez personally told us that he gave that report to the Board of Directors.
[David]: After that, Jorge Enrique learnt about some meetings held by the project partners to clarify the situation, but he said he hadn’t taken part in them. What the majority partner company did was hire another firm to conduct a confidential analysis, among other things, of the public bidding process for Ruta del Sol II. The report from that analysis, dated October 2015, concluded that, based on the information provided by the company, there had been transparency and legality in those processes.
A month later, an investigative commission —also from the majority partner— wrote another report on the findings from Corficolombiana, where Jorge Enrique worked as a controller. The conclusion they reached, according to the document, was that after a detailed verification, and I quote, “no significant irregularities were found.”
And nothing was reported to state authorities. There was nothing more Jorge Enrique could do.
[Juanita]: Like he no longer had anything to complain about, and nothing happened: he would go to the concessionaire, be there for two seconds because he no longer had anything to work on, come back home, have lunch, go back to the concessionaire to see what he could do. Because little by little they were leaving him without work to do and they were, I think, waiting for him to resign, but he said I’m not going to resign. He said, well let them fire me because I’m going to keep trying to work with the little I have, at least, but I’m not going to stop working or lose my job because of this.
[David]: The option of resigning wasn’t even a topic of conversation with the family.
[Juanita]: There were many things that simply left no room for discussion and I think his work was one of them.
[Carolina]: I was also angry at my dad. Why, if he could have had a quiet life, why did he choose this?
[Juanita]: I think we knew there were things we could say to my dad and things we couldn’t, because he simply did what he thought was right and that’s it.
[David]: And for him, the right thing to do was to keep insisting: to report the irregularities he had found until the company’s top executives activated the mechanisms to stop it. But it was also a form of protection for himself.
[Carolina]: For my dad it was already too important to denounce, because if he didn’t denounce, having known that, well he ended up being an accomplice. So he couldn’t just detach himself like that.
I never imagined it was so serious. Yes, I thought work problems, well… I didn’t imagine it was everything he discovered and what it all ended up being.
[David]: Because it’s not like he talked about all the details with his family… except with one of his children.
[Juanita]: With Alejandro they had very serious conversations. Alejandro clearly knew everything that was happening, but I felt that my dad trusted Alejandro like few people.
[David]: But it wasn’t just a feeling. Indeed, Jorge Enrique confided many things to his son, and both knew these weren’t just work problems. They weren’t even just Colombia’s problems. This was much bigger. It involved very powerful people.
We’ll be right back
[David]: We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
The information Jorge Enrique had wasn’t just about one project, or even about one country. Remember this—it’s very important: the consortium in charge of Ruta del Sol II was made up of three partners. Two Colombians, both minority partners. One of those was the company Episol, which belonged to Corficolombiana and was part of Grupo Aval. And the third, the majority partner, was foreign, and at that time, the largest infrastructure company on the continent. A company with megaprojects in several countries in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Except for a few politicians and businesspeople, almost no one in Colombia had heard its name. But that started to change in June 2015, when the head of that company, Marcelo Odebrecht, was arrested in Brazil.
[Journalist]: According to official sources, 59 people were arrested in the operation, including businessmen Marcelo Odebrecht and Otávio Azevedo, who preside over the companies Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez.
[Journalist]: Marcelo Odebrecht represents the third generation of the family business, the largest engineering company in Latin America, also linked to infrastructure construction for the 2016 Olympic Games.
[Journalist]: Everything pointed to the accused having known about the movements the companies had done to have works granted to the state company.
[David]: And the year before, Brazil’s police had raided a car wash in Curitiba where, according to investigators’ suspicions, they were laundering money.
[Periodista]: A Polícia Federal desmantelou hoje um esquema de lavagem de dinheiro em seis estados e no Distrito Federal.
[Journalist]: The Federal Police dismantled today a money laundering scheme in six states and the Federal District.
[Periodista]: Pelo menos 24 pessoas estavam envolvidas na Operação Lava Jato.
[Journalist]: At least 24 people were involved in Operation Car Wash.
[David]: That operation, which later became known as Lava Jato, ended up discovering that this was the tip of the iceberg of a huge corruption network in which Petrobras, the state oil company, managed bribes between companies and politicians at all levels and parties to secure multimillion-dollar contracts. One of the companies involved was Odebrecht.
[Journalist]: This Friday, the presidents of the construction companies were arrested after being accused of fraud in bidding and bribes to Petrobras officials.
[Journalist]: Brazil’s largest construction company, Odebrecht, expressed its indignation at the arrest order for five of its executives for allegedly being linked to the Petrobras corruption scandal.
[David]: Although at that moment they were just beginning to learn what was happening in Brazil, not the regional scandal that came later, Jorge Enrique had shared with his son the evidence that this corruption had penetrated Colombia’s largest infrastructure project.
And among many of the pieces of evidence he had, there were some audio recordings that compromised very powerful people.
In the upcoming episodes of La Ruta del Sol
[Néstor Humberto Martínez]: So now we don’t know how…what we’re getting into. We don’t know if they’re giving money to paramilitaries. If, if, if there’s corruption, those sons of bitches thieves are stealing it.
[David]: We’re going to hear how Jorge Enrique made sure the evidence of the irregularities he found was thoroughly documented.
[Iván Serrano]: He called the recordings «the Christmas carols.» I have enough messages from him saying: soon you’ll be able to play the Christmas carols, but not yet. Hey, be very careful, my life and my family’s depend on this. I have huge security problems.
[María Jimena Duzán]: Everyone said there were bribes, but, but it couldn’t be proven. And the first time I saw it clearly was with these documents that Jorge Enrique Pizano gave me. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had a way to break open the scandal.
[David]: We’ll also talk about the controversy generated by the investigation into the deaths of father and son.
[Carolina]: They took it away. But I… at that moment I said well, a towel with blood, since it has nothing to do with my dad’s death, right, because it’s blood from where. I mean, he shaved and cut himself, that’s what I thought.
[Journalist]: Oviedo went further. He refuted Valdés’s statements about a blood-stained towel.
[Javier Oviedo Serrano]: Do we want to ask the director general how he can say that the bloodstain belonged to Jorge Pizano if there’s no reference sample because the body was cremated?
[David]: We’ll hear about the political scandal that this family tragedy sparked.
[Jorge Robledo]: What changed this story? What’s new? We all know: Jorge Enrique Pizano is what’s new in this story. Jorge Enrique Pizano was a controller, an auditor for the Ruta del Sol. In other words, a person who had access to the company’s internal information, the one who could know what was going on there, and he revealed so many truths that things got complicated and began to change.
[David]: And we’ll talk with some very important characters in this story who, until now, had preferred not to give many details about the case.
[Carlos Valdés]: The death of Jorge Enrique Pizano was being framed as a political event and there was one political group accusing another political group that was defending itself. In the middle of it all were the director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and the institution itself.
[Néstor Humberto]: A long time ago, I’d made the decision not to talk about these topics anymore, because it seems to me better to let history and justice run their course. But this seemed like a good opportunity: a different media outlet, one that knows how to make a different kind of radio and isn’t tainted by the political conflicts we’re living through in Colombia today, —they’re such a mess.
Credits
La Ruta del Sol is a podcast from Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of the My Cultura podcast network from iHeart Radio.
The reporting and production of this episode were done by me, David Trujillo, with production support from Desirée Yépez. 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. Legal review by Camilo Vallejo. Sound design and mixing by Martín Cruz, with original music by Andrés Nusser. Series artwork and art direction by Diego Corzo.
Product development for La Ruta del Sol was led by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production by Nelson Rauda, with support from Melisa Rabanales and Samantha Proaño from the Radio Ambulante Studios audience team.
La Ruta del Sol was recorded at Fiona Records.
At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
We’d like to thank FLIP for their valuable support in the legal review of this production and their guidance on security matters.
Carolina Guerrero is the executive producer of Central and the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.
You can follow us on social media as centralpodcastRA and subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio
I’m David Trujillo. Thanks for listening.