[David Trujillo]: In the previous episode we heard how Jorge Enrique Pizano had shared with some journalists the irregularities he found in the construction of Ruta del Sol II.
[Iván Serrano]: So the question was: Who did you tell this to over there? Well, I told Néstor Humberto Martínez. And do you have proof that Néstor Humberto knew? Yes, I have the recording. And he lets me listen to a part of it.
[Néstor Humberto Martínez]: Because I see you in a state of anxiety. What do I do?
[Jorge Enrique Pizano]: No, no
[Néstor Humberto]: So Sarmiento sends word to me: nothing.
[Jorge Enrique]: Ok. Because the thing is…
[Néstor Humberto]: Nothing.
[Jorge Enrique]: Well. Because the thing is…
[Néstor Humberto]: Nothing.
[Néstor Humberto]: But if you know about something…
[Jorge Enrique]: Of course.
[Néstor Humberto]: Sound the alarms. And this is the way, because, damn, over there they’re pissed about what happened three years ago, when you sounded the goddamn alarms, and nobody paid attention to you.
[María Jimena Duzán]: And I said: this can’t be. Did this really happen? Is this Néstor Humberto Martínez’s voice? The Attorney General who had said he was supposedly going to end all acts of corruption and expose those responsible for Odebrecht. And I said no, this is a bomb. And then I thought and said: wow, if this gets published, well, Néstor Humberto Martínez would have to resign.
[David]: Today we begin in mid-2018. Jorge Enrique, as had been usual since the beginning of that year, stopped by journalist María Jimena Duzán’s house again. That day he arrived in his car.
[María Jimena]: Full! The car was full of documents, but full of documents!, and he left them with me.
[David]: They were all related to his work, during eight years, as controller of Ruta del Sol II, the unfinished project that Odebrecht and a company from Grupo Aval, one of the largest and most powerful conglomerates in the country, had begun to build. María Jimena already knew some of those documents, with them, she had been publishing her articles about corruption in the project.
Since Jorge Enrique had managed to sell his apartment and was moving to a house a little over an hour from Bogotá, before leaving, he preferred that María Jimena keep the documents. Perhaps she could find new information to publish there.
[María Jimena]: And so, a month looking at those documents. And there I discovered, by luck, because well I had people who were helping me, a settlement agreement.
[David]: A settlement agreement is basically an agreement between two or more parties to put an end to a legal conflict and prevent new disputes. The confidential document that María Jimena found, dated March 2016, nine months before the Odebrecht corruption scandal broke in Colombia, was very clear to her:
[María Jimena]: This is a settlement agreement between Odebrecht and Grupo Aval. It was an acknowledgment of the existence of those irregular contracts that they had denied to Jorge Enrique himself so many times. Everyone there, at Grupo Aval, denied it to him. But in this contract they did acknowledge them. And they said: look, those contracts that add up to 32 billion and that were paid, Odebrecht owes them to Grupo Aval. And that, well, we’re going to work it out between the two of us to help each other out. You won’t sue me, I won’t sue you. That’s what the contract said.
[David]: According to that, Odebrecht had to return those 32 billion pesos to the construction consortium, which was more than 10 million dollars at the exchange rate of the time, although María Jimena couldn’t confirm that that payment had actually been made. Furthermore, if one of the parties breached the contract, it had to give the other an additional payment of more than a million and a half dollars at the exchange rate of the time. And if either one broke confidentiality, the penalty was double: more than 3 million dollars at the exchange rate of the time.
[María Jimena]: And so I said: no, this is definitely the smoking gun, this is the smoking gun showing that those contracts are irregular, they did exist, despite the fact that all the authorities at Grupo Aval told Jorge Enrique himself that that wasn’t true, that it wasn’t real, that that was an invention of his, you know? So of course, there was already evidence that Odebrecht and Grupo Aval knew about these contracts and that they wanted, somehow, to cover it up or whitewash it so it would look like it was a transaction that had been resolved with the idea of helping each other out and that they were moving forward in their partnership.
[David]: In other words, that they had decided not to make claims against each other and leave things as they were.
Jorge Enrique insisted to María Jimena that he didn’t know about that contract between Odebrecht and Grupo Aval. He said he was just as surprised as she was, and even more so to learn that, as the document stated, the agreement had resulted from some meetings that both parties had between September and November 2015. That is, right after he recorded the company’s senior officials, including the then-lawyer Néstor Humberto Martínez, and it became very clear that he gave them proof of his findings.
But this contract that María Jimena had discovered left her feeling that Jorge Enrique had alerted the company about the irregularities, but, instead of protecting him and putting an end to what appeared to be corruption, they rushed to cover everything up. María Jimena wanted to know how they had reached that decision. So she traveled to Brazil to speak with direct sources from Odebrecht.
[María Jimena]: And, indeed, they confirmed that the other members of Grupo Aval went all the way there to make this contract, to sign it. The one who proposed it and promoted it was Néstor Humberto Martínez, who at that time was the lawyer for Grupo Aval and who later became the Attorney General of the Nation in charge of investigating Odebrecht and the Grupo Aval scandal, please.
[David]: María Jimena published this settlement agreement in Semana magazine in July 2018. In the text she launched several questions, some directly to the Attorney General, so he would clarify what had happened. With one of those questions, which was what this document seemed to be, she titled the article: A code of silence?
[María Jimena]: When I broke that whole story…that really was another very complicated point and which also unleashed rage against Jorge Enrique Pizano. The threat he had was that they were going to put him in jail. And that was like a sword of Damocles for him. And he knew they were going to make him pay for the fact that he had discovered something. When that happened, Jorge Enrique himself said you know what? It’s time. We have to release the recordings.
[David]: The audio recordings in which it became clear that the then Attorney General of the Nation, Néstor Humberto Martínez, knew about the irregularities in one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country before being Attorney General, and that he still didn’t report them to the authorities.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, this is La Ruta del Sol.
I’m David Trujillo. Episode 3: The interview.
[David]: After the publication of that settlement agreement, Jorge Enrique thought it was better to release the recordings on a television newscast, Noticias Uno. María Jimena agreed. So he contacted Iván Serrano, the other journalist to whom he had been giving information for a few months, including the audios. He told him it was time to reveal everything. By then, he was trying to shield himself from a possible charge from the Attorney General’s Office for allegedly having received a bribe when he was manager of the Bogotá Aqueduct. Additionally, he had already given the authorities proof of the irregularities he had found in Ruta del Sol II, including names of senior officials from Grupo Aval and businessmen involved. A year before he had given to the Attorney General’s Office the reports he made when he was controller of the megaproject, and now they had contacted him again to testify against the only Grupo Aval official who was being investigated. Jorge Enrique asked for protection to be able to give that testimony.
So, much of the information that the authorities had was already coming out in the media, but now, with Iván Serrano, it would be the first time that his direct source was going to show his face and speak on national television. They agreed to meet in August 2018 to record an interview that they would publish later. This is Iván.
[Iván]: It’s in his apartment. I think on a day when he knows his daughters or his wife aren’t going to be there. And we do the interview.
[David]: In the video you only see Jorge Enrique in a medium shot, sitting next to a desk. He has a blue shirt and a black vest with a lapel microphone. Iván, off camera, asks him questions. This is how the interview begins…
[Iván]: I want to ask you a little about the decision you made to give us this interview. Why have you made that decision?
[Jorge Enrique]: Yes, I believe that the facts and the truths are coming to light and we see how there really is a plot, if you can call it that, against integrity, in this case, against my integrity as a person and that my rights are being violated.
[David]: A plot, he says, because he felt they were cornering him. The reason, according to him, was having done his job well for almost a decade, even when some of the people involved didn’t expect him to do so.
[Jorge Enrique]: I became inconvenient for many people, among them those who today are… were convicted for the irregular contracts of Ruta del Sol.
[David]: He said explicitly that he had all the proof of those irregularities.
[Jorge Enrique]: I don’t speculate. I always make my statements because I have proof of each one of my actions, which I did in accordance with what the law ordered.
[David]: Now, we must remember that Grupo Aval had been on the New York Stock Exchange since 2014 and that meant that if there had been any irregular money transactions in the United States, that country’s authorities could investigate and, if necessary, sanction the company.
So, at that moment, Iván asked him a key question:
[Iván]: Were there transfers abroad? Were there transfers to the United States?
[Jorge Enrique]: Of contracts identified, not by me, but by the contractual manager designated by Episol and the construction consortium, yes, payments of transfers abroad were detected.
[Iván]: Do you know the amount?
[Jorge Enrique]: 2 million 700 thousand dollars, if I’m not wrong.
[Iván]: With what destination as t source?
[Jorge Enrique]: To Constructores Unidos.
[David]: Iván, who had known Jorge Enrique for a decade and had taken him as a source on other topics, knew how rigorous he was. That interview and everything he said there was supported with very solid foundations.
[Iván]: He was obsessive about information and he had proof of everything he said. Jorge Enrique would say A and show the paper for A. He’d say B, he had the paper for B.
[David]: During the interview, Jorge Enrique added something even more compromising: he had handed all this well-organized information to his bosses and he had warned them that something strange was happening long before the Odebrecht international corruption scandal broke.
[Jorge Enrique]: I presented the reports to the person who appointed me as controller, right? Not only the final report, but everything… there is evidence in those emails. And here it’s clear and concrete evidence. It’s not that I heard, that I said, no. It’s what’s in the documents and it is the documents that speak.
[David]: In the interview Iván asked Jorge Enrique about two particular characters: about the president of Grupo Aval.
[Iván]: Did Mr. Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo also have knowledge?
[Jorge Enrique]: Yes, yes, of course.
[David]: And also, of course, about the Attorney General of the Nation.
[Iván]: Did you inform Mr. Néstor Humberto Martínez of these facts?
[Jorge Enrique]: Néstor Humberto Martínez, well, he was the lawyer for… for Grupo Aval.
[Iván]: But did he know? Did you personally inform him about the matter?
[Jorge Enrique]: Yes, of course.
[David]: And he had the recordings that proved it.
[Jorge Enrique]: All the meetings are perfectly documented both with documents and with audios, because I can record my meetings for follow-up.
[David]: In that interview, Jorge Enrique also mentioned that the witness who accused him before the Attorney General’s Office of allegedly receiving a bribe when he was manager of the Bogotá Aqueduct knew about the recordings. He doesn’t clarify how this person got that information, but he did say he was extorting him with that.
[Jorge Enrique]: That’s why he sends me a text message telling me that, that…
[Iván]: And you have that?
[Jorge Enrique]: Yes, I have the text. In other words, extorting me for…
[Iván]: What did he tell you in the chat?
[Jorge Enrique]: No, no, that I had to give him that information. If not, he would speak badly of me.
[David]: Although Jorge Enrique seems very sure and convinced in that interview, Iván insists that he was actually cautious.
[Iván]: I thought he was going to be much more… much more direct, like he usually was.
[David]: And yes, he said compromising things like that one of Colombia’s richest men and the Attorney General knew about those irregularities from before, or that it was possible that the money that came out of there had gone through the United States, but still, Jorge Enrique was sparing.
[Iván]: Evidently, he had some fears. It was absolutely real and as I tell you, he spoke in a low voice in his apartment. In other words, it wasn’t a thing… it wasn’t a thing from the movies. I mean, here we’ve been understanding that many of those fears were absolutely real.
[David]: This fear led Jorge Enrique to ask Iván not to publish that interview yet… nor the audios that proved he had shown proof of those irregular contracts to the now Attorney General. Jorge Enrique had one condition:
[Iván]: Which was when he was safe in the United States or if something happened to him. Unfortunately it was the latter.
[David]: The latter: three months later, he died.
A break and we’ll be back.
[David]: We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
[David]: Jorge Enrique asked the Attorney General’s Office for protection for all the sensitive information he had given them. He asked for security for himself and for his family, and even wrote a letter directly to Néstor Humberto Martínez, but they never gave him that protection.
To the economic crisis, unemployment and the lymphatic cancer that he was still treating, was added the fear of what could happen to his family. He asked his daughters, Juanita and Carolina, to take many precautions.
[Juanita Pizano]: My dad would tell me: don’t take the same route to catch the bus at the university. He’d tell me: change routes, change paths. Not to talk on the phone about where we are and try not to send messages either about where we are or who we’re with.
[Carolina Pizano]: My dad is worried about his health, about his physical integrity, you know? And about ours. So it was like racing against time without knowing what was going to happen. It was like you’re trapped in a problem. You’re trapped there and there’s nothing you can do to get out of that problem. You can’t say okay, let’s forget about this. How can you live like that?
[David]: Both knew, without many details, about the mess their dad was in. And they also knew he had been talking to journalists, but not everything was clear to them.
[Carolina]: Beyond the content, I didn’t know that my dad had… had said to keep certain information until he died. I didn’t know my dad was so afraid as to do that. Everything was very bad. Everything seemed… It’s like a pressure cooker, that you don’t know when it’s going to explode.
[David]: Juanita remembers very well Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Unlike her parents, she had stayed living in Bogotá, at her grandmother’s, because it was easier for her to go to the university from there. That day her dad went to the city and met her at a café to tell her something very important.
For a few months, Jorge Enrique had been talking with American authorities to offer them the information he had in exchange for asylum and protection. Remember: Grupo Aval had been on the New York Stock Exchange since 2014, it was the responsibility of that country’s authorities to investigate the suspicious money movements the company had made. An investigation that, furthermore, connected with that of another bigger case: the Odebrecht corruption.
That day, Jorge Enrique told Juanita that he had already sent the proof he had.
[Juanita]: We had a coffee and he told me that the complaint in the United States had already been made. They’re going to notify Grupo Aval or they already notified them, and he told me with a… I mean, he was about to cry. And I said: What do we do? Where do we hide? And he said: I don’t know. And silence. I mean, silence, silence. There was nothing more to say. Only for me it was very valuable to be in that moment with my dad and make him feel that I was supporting him. And that’s it, at the end we said goodbye, but yes, I remember thinking when is this going to end, how is this going to end? Because this has to end at some point, I mean, this… Something is going to happen, like it’s going to be the end point, but what’s it going to be because I feel it’s deadly.
[David]: Jorge Enrique spoke with journalist María Jimena Duzán the next day, Wednesday, November 7.
[María Jimena]: And he called me and said: Hey, how’s it going? I’m not well, the thing is… telling me that he was very sad about the cancer, he was tired, that he didn’t know what to do with his family, he was kind of depressed. He would always get depressed, but he had many things to be depressed about. I honestly tell you that his life wasn’t easy because they made his life unlivable. And that was the last time I spoke with him.
[David]: Because the next day, Thursday, November 8, a day before his birthday, Jorge Enrique died.
The mother of the Pizano sisters, who didn’t want to speak in this story, gave the news to her two daughters by phone. Juanita was in class at the university. Carolina, who had left two months ago to study in Spain, was walking on the street.
[Carolina]: When my mom called me to tell me that my dad… She told me: Carito, Carito, your dad died. I had a panic attack in the middle of the street. No, I went into a sort of shock… like not understanding, you know? What had happened. I still don’t understand very well.
[Juanita]: She just said poor thing, I found him lying on the floor. And she told me: poor thing, poor thing. Immediately I asked her: Who killed my dad? Who was it? Who was there? And my mom told me: nobody killed your dad. He had a heart attack.
[David]: And although the mother could barely speak from how distressed she was, she tried to explain to them what had happened early that morning. She told them they were getting ready to leave.
[Carolina]: My mom goes down to have breakfast and when she comes back up well my dad should have been getting ready, but my dad wasn’t opening the bathroom door.
[Juanita]: She knocked on the door and he didn’t answer. Nothing. She opened the door.
[Carolina]: And she finds my dad lying on the floor, but my dad was still… still alive.
[Juanita]: It seemed like he couldn’t breathe well. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t speak. He was breathing very hard and had his eyes open and was looking at her.
[Carolina]: My mom puts his underwear on him because my dad was in a towel. She puts him in the SUV to take him to the health center, but there my dad, well, dies.
[Juanita]: And once they declare my dad dead, the first thing my mom does, the first thing my mom does is two things: one, tell Néstor Humberto Martínez through a message.
[Carolina]: Your friend just died. Something like that. And with Luis Carlos Sarmiento, my mom called the secretary and told her: tell your boss that Jorge Enrique Pizano just died. And I think that her having done that, in that moment, says a lot.
[David]: The news of Jorge Enrique Pizano’s death came out immediately in the media. It also started to spread among those who knew him and his case. Journalist Iván Serrano was called by his boss, the deputy director of the newscast, to tell him. He told him that now they did have to publish the interview that had been pending for three months.
[Iván]: I was in shock and was frozen because it was a person with whom I constantly met and went to his house and talked to. It was agreed that he would let us know: ok, now we can. That would have been ideal. That he, alive, safe, would have said: ok, let’s proceed. Not like this.
[David]: That same day, María Jimena remembers that she received a text message from Jorge Enrique. In it he complained about the same situation and said that his lawyer had told him that they had summoned him to an interrogation at the Attorney General’s Office for the investigation against him. María Jimena and he agreed to meet the following Saturday.
But three hours later, a mutual acquaintance called her.
[María Jimena]: And told me: Did you hear the news? What happened? Jorge Enrique died. What do you mean Jorge Enrique died? He was normal, as always, complaining, but he was fine.
[David]: The first thing María Jimena did was call Alejandro, Jorge Enrique’s oldest son, who lived in another country but who was going to travel to Colombia immediately. She already knew him because Jorge Enrique had gone with him to her house to have her listen to the recordings. Alejandro was aware of everything his dad was going through, including the publication that was coming, and agreed to meet with María Jimena that weekend, after Jorge Enrique’s funeral.
[María Jimena]: And then it happened that… Alejandro died.
[David]: The tragic scene at the beginning of this series: Alejandro drank the liquid from a bottle of flavored water that was on his dad’s desk and collapsed minutes later. As we already know, he died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital, but they still had to take his body there to do the autopsy and determine the cause of death. The hospital reported the case to the authorities.
[David]: Without yet knowing what had happened, Carolina and Juanita remember that in the midst of the confusion at the hospital, an official from the CTI, the Technical Investigation Unit, the area of the Attorney General’s Office that supports investigations, of collecting evidence, approached them.
[Juanita]: He immediately puts my sister and me in a little room. The man asks us what happened.
[Carolina]: He started asking a lot of questions, and he’d tell me but at what time was it? And it’s like no, I didn’t, I had no notion of time.
[Juanita]: I felt that the man didn’t want to let me speak. I’d tell him, the thing is I’m over 18 years old, I’m 19, I know what happened, but I felt like the man didn’t want me to say anything, I don’t know why. I mean, it frustrated me a lot.
[David]: After the questions, the CTI investigator asked them to go to the house where everything had happened.
[Juanita]: And he starts touching doors, drawers, everything with his hands, without gloves, without any kind of precaution.
[Carolina]: He takes a bottle out of the trash and says what is this? And I said: do you want me to tell you it’s a bottle? I mean… And that’s it. He asked some questions, like with that air of superiority but with zero tact. I mean, my dad and my brother just died… Why are you asking me things this way?
[David]: The sisters don’t remember exactly how long that first informal visit lasted, but it was quick and the CTI official didn’t take anything. When it ended, the family decided not to stay there that night. They closed the house and went to Bogotá.
The next day, Monday, November 12, the shock was no longer just for the family, but also for many people who had seen Jorge Enrique’s interview on Noticias Uno.
[Archive]
[Mábel Lara]: Pizano was convinced that he was a victim of judicial and economic power, especially of General Attorney Néstor Humberto Martínez, and our journalist Iván Serrano was with him and received from his hands proof that he was a whistleblower and not the accused.
[David]: They also published the recording, as they had agreed…
[Archive]
[Mábel Lara]: He gave us audio recordings that prove that he told Néstor Humberto Martínez, with documents in view, all the Odebrecht irregularities in Colombia since mid-2015. Neither Martínez nor Corficolombiana, the Brazilian company’s partner in the construction of Ruta del Sol II, paid attention to him. On the contrary, he was fired two years later.
[David]: During the same broadcast of the newscast, they talked about what was known at that time about Alejandro’s death.
[Archive]
[Journalist]: Yesterday, when the family was just beginning to recover from Pizano’s demise, tragedy brought mourning to them again. Alejandro, who had arrived from Barcelona to attend his father’s burial, also died. The cause of death is still unknown.
[David]: That was confirmed the next day, Tuesday, November 13. When the little information available started to leak and the story got much more complicated, the Deputy Attorney General of the Nation and the director of the Forensic Medicine Institute, the forensic entity, held a press conference.
[Archive]
[María Paulina Riveros]: Good afternoon. Well, today I’m accompanied by Dr. Carlos Valdés, with whom we inform the country that on Sunday, November 11 in the afternoon hours, the Attorney General’s Office received the news of the death of Alejandro Pizano Ponce de León.
[David]: She said that after two days of an initial investigation, of reconstructing the facts around Alejandro’s death and analyzing the results of the autopsy…
[María Paulina]: The cause of death was poisoning by cyanide ingestion.
[David]: And that, additionally, the investigators had in their possession the bottle where the liquid was.
[María Paulina]: To which the corresponding analyses are being performed. As a result of the previous facts, the Attorney General’s Office has also initiated a criminal investigation to determine the reasons why this substance was found in the house of the victim’s parents.
[David]: That was the big question: Why was there cyanide there? Well, that and also the cause of Jorge Enrique’s death. Could it be known if he also drank from that bottle?
[María Paulina]: We understand that Dr. Pizano’s body was cremated at the time because in the autopsy, apparently, the cause of death was established as a heart attack.
[David]: In other words, since it was supposed to have been a death from natural causes, it wasn’t necessary to preserve his remains intact and now, of course, they couldn’t do this type of analysis on the ashes.
But there seemed to be an alternative.
[María Paulina]: Dr. Valdés, I don’t know if you can explain that part of the autopsy, but I repeat, that is being investigated at this moment.
[David]: The director of the Forensic Medicine Institute confirmed that the result of that autopsy revealed cardiac failure.
[Carlos Valdés]: However, the person who performed the clinical autopsy left samples of different tissues for histopathology studies.
[David]: Meaning that, that person decided to keep parts of tissue from Jorge Enrique’s body in the hospital to analyze them. That meant that in those samples they could look for traces of cyanide. That’s what the director of Forensic Medicine suggested.
[Carlos]: The investigation that at this moment the Attorney General’s Office has undertaken will very surely order the analysis of those samples.
[David]: A break and we’ll be back
[David]: We’re back on La Ruta del Sol.
The Pizanos’ story was very juicy and very particular even in the violent context of Colombia, a country in which there have been and continue to be many witnesses of crimes who end up dead. But this case, first of all, had to do with an enormous web of international corruption. Furthermore, the witness died after trying unsuccessfully to ask for protection for everything he had discovered, and with the additional tragedy of his son’s death under very strange circumstances. And, as if that weren’t enough, there was also the audio of the Attorney General of the Nation with a phrase that became famous.
[Néstor Humberto]: Hehehehe
[Jorge Enrique]: Do you understand me?
[Néstor Humberto]: Yes, yes, yes.
[Jorge Enrique]: Idiots…
[Néstor Humberto]: Yes, yes, yes. This is a bribe, dude.
[David]: On social media they wouldn’t stop talking about what was happening. Even Alejandro’s last tweet that he published on the morning of the same day of his death went viral. In it he speaks to a very well-known radio journalist who publicly accused Jorge Enrique of having given a contract to Odebrecht in exchange for a bribe when he was manager of the Bogotá Aqueduct. Alejandro’s tweet says the following: «To you who didn’t speak the truth about my dad’s situation when you could, who judged him through your microphones, life will have to teach you to be responsible.»
In response to that tweet, people started commenting things like these:
[Tweet 1]
Strength for your whole family in such a terrible situation but it will be the truth that cleans Mr. Jorge.
[Tweet 2]
Rest in peace father and son and may justice be done and what happened be clarified. Everything that happened is too strange, this country is in the hands of a mafia. This is now undeniable.
[Tweet 3]
People who call themselves journalists but act without scruples or professionalism. All with individual interests. They cover up for some and denigrate others.
[Tweet 4]
Forensic Medicine must determine the causes of the deaths of father and son, gruesome events.
[Tweet 5]
A supportive hug for you and your family. For that journalist, total contempt for his mediocre work.
[Tweet 6]
The corrupt people of this country, because of their greed for money and power, destroy lives and families. They will fall, sooner or later they will fall… in memory of those fallen because of corruption, double standards and violence in Colombia!
[David]: It became the most important news in the media.
[Archive]
[Journalist]: Attorney General’s Office initiated an investigation to determine the causes of Alejandro Pizano’s death.
[Journalist]: The Attorney General’s Office is investigating the strange death of Alejandro Pizano, son of Jorge Enrique Pizano, one of the main witnesses in the Odebrecht case.
[Journalist]: The question today is, who put the cyanide in that bottle. The Attorney General’s Office is investigating the strange death of Alejandro Pizano, son of Jorge Enrique Pizano, one of the main witnesses in the Odebrecht case, who arrived in Bogotá, as we’ve told you, to attend his father’s burial.
[David]: The news even reached international media…
[Archive]
[Journalist]: Colombia is investigating the death of a key witness in the Odebrecht case, after his son died poisoned with cyanide. Now it’s being investigated whether the engineer, key witness in the scandal of the Brazilian construction company that has shaken all of South America, was murdered.
[Journalist]: Those close to the former auditor dismiss that he intended to commit suicide with cyanide. The engineer left a recorded interview in case he died or obtained protection in another country. His statement implicates the Attorney General, Néstor Humberto Martínez, and raises doubts about the investigation of the plot in Colombia.
[David]: Every day they published more and more information about the scandal this story had become. If before very few people in Colombia had heard of Odebrecht, now the Pizanos’ case had turned attention to this international corruption machine.
But the family was saturated. They couldn’t stand the media chasing them to know more details.
[Carolina]: They contacted us without the slightest tact. Without the slightest empathy. So I’d tell them they were not professional at all. And obviously, you’re in pain,they start harassing you, well what you do is shut yourself in, isolate yourself, say, don’t talk to me about the subject. It’s like I don’t want to talk about this. And like that to everyone. But a ton of journalists, a ton of journalists.
[David]: But there was someone who did have to talk about the subject publicly:
[Archive]
[Juan Roberto Vargas]: Mr. Attorney General, thank you very much for attending Noticias Caracol.
[Néstor Humberto]: Well, thank you very much for your invitation. It seems very timely and very important to me.
[David]: This interview with Néstor Humberto Martínez came out on the night of November 14, 2018, three days after Alejandro’s death. It was on national television with journalist Juan Roberto Vargas.
[Juan Roberto]: How do you feel today, Attorney General?
[Néstor Humberto]: Well look, this position of highest responsibility has all these uncertainties and difficulties and you have to handle the situation always with composure, with poise and with a lot of serenity. That’s why, I hadn’t spoken out until today.
[David]: Martínez started by saying that this whole debate that was being generated was political, not legal, and that’s why it was full of lies. The first thing he tried to clarify was that that meeting that Jorge Enrique recorded in 2015, three years before dying, and that Noticias Uno revealed, was personal, between two friends, not work-related.
[Néstor Humberto]: He invited me to that meeting, he asked me a favor to take some papers to Dr. Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo. I acted in that meeting as a personal friend of Jorge Enrique.
[Juan Roberto]: Of course, you act as his friend and he tells you a series of things that later become the heart of the worst corruption scandal that Colombia has had. The big question that Colombia asks today, and this isn’t political or legal, Mr. Attorney General, with all due respect, is, how did you at that moment not report that to the competent authorities?
[Néstor Humberto]: The answer is in the recordings that all Colombians learned about over the weekend.
[Juan Roberto]: What’s the answer?
[Néstor Humberto]: I ask Jorge Enrique, Jorge Enrique, tell me, are these bribes, are they kickbacks? Yes or no?
[David]: He was referring to this part of the recording that Noticias Uno revealed:
[Recording]
[Néstor Humberto]: Are these bribes? Yes or no? Tell me. How is it true? Yes or no? What?
[Interview]
[Néstor Humberto]: And he tells me man, well I don’t have certainty.
[Recording]
[Jorge Enrique]: No, man, well I don’t have certainties.
[Interview]
[Néstor Humberto]: He didn’t have certainty that that was a corruption crime. So one can’t go before the authorities to say look, investigate this that seems to be, that it could be or maybe not, no. When you go to the authorities you say this is like this.
[David]: I repeat Martínez’s argument: since Jorge Enrique, at that point in the conversation, told him that he didn’t have certainty that they were crimes, then, he had no way to report it.
[Juan Roberto]: But in other parts of the same conversations that Noticias Uno reveals, you even say: look, what you’re showing me is very serious. It even seems like there are bribes for people in the Colombian government. Wasn’t that enough?
[David]: Juan Roberto, the journalist, refers to this part of the recording in which Martínez, as the company’s lawyer, does seem to sense that there were crimes.
[Néstor Humberto]: You know what I think? That it’s for the paras, that it’s internal corruption, that it’s to pay bribes outside, that it’s to pay bribes inside. All of the above.
[David]: He says: that it’s for the paras (that is, paramilitaries), that it’s internal corruption, that it’s to pay bribes outside, that it’s to pay bribes inside. All of the above.
But there’s also this other part of the recording, which Martínez also didn’t mention in the interview, in which he seems to be sure that they were bribes.
[Recording]
[Néstor Humberto]: That one, for example, Inversiones Profesionales, it’s clear that it’s a huge bribe.
[David]: Nor did he mention this other part of the recording, the famous phrase.
[Néstor Humberto]: Jorge Enrique: Do you understand me?
[Néstor Humberto]: Yes, yes, yes.
[Jorge Enrique]: Idiots…
[Néstor Humberto]: Yes, yes, yes. This is a bribe, dude.
[David]: But going back to the interview… Martínez did confirm that Jorge Enrique discovered suspicious contracts, but insisted that they were only known to be crimes when the Attorney General’s Office, his Attorney General’s Office, investigated two years later. That’s when they realized that Jorge Enrique was indeed right.
He also assured that Jorge Enrique had been key in the investigations.
[Néstor Humberto]: For God’s sake, that can’t be forgotten. He was very important. But additionally, he gave statements here in the Odebrecht case and everything he said about the contracts we incorporated in May 2018 into the Attorney General’s Office investigations.
[David]: 2018… eight years after Jorge Enrique began reporting the irregularities to his bosses.
And, as we’ve already heard, the heads of Odebrecht never testified in Colombia. Neither did those of Grupo Aval. And the way the journalists learned about the workings of that corruption in the country was, in large part, through what the authorities in Peru and Brazil investigated.
Martínez also failed to mention in the interview that Jorge Enrique didn’t feel safe, that he had asked the Attorney General’s Office for protection for having given such compromising information and that they never gave it to him.
Juan Roberto, the journalist, asked him next why he didn’t report those irregularities when they appointed him Attorney General, in August 2016.
[Juan Roberto]: Didn’t it occur to you? And forgive me, please excuse me. It’s with the greatest respect, Attorney General, didn’t it occur to you to say hey, a man told me two years ago that there were some big irregularities there?
[Néstor Humberto]: No, look. I can’t make references to conversations that have to do with my professional practice.
[David]: But remember that a few minutes before he had said it was a meeting of friends, not a professional meeting.
[Juan Roberto]: But you were friends…
[Néstor Humberto]: Just like you, journalist.
[Juan Roberto]: No, because you tell me you were friends, you weren’t a lawyer.
[Néstor Humberto]: Yes, but later I made a contract… No, no, no.
[Juan Roberto]: That is…
[Néstor Humberto]: Don’t create misunderstandings. Of course, the friend asks me to take some papers…
[Juan Roberto]: As a friend, not as a lawyer.
[Néstor Humberto]: … and after they reach an agreement, as a lawyer they ask me to execute a contract, which is when I learn about the irregular contracts.
[David]: Martínez was referring to the settlement agreement we mentioned at the beginning of this episode and that journalist María Jimena Duzán published.
With that, Martínez changed his argument: according to what he said in the interview, he learned about the irregular contracts as a lawyer when he made that settlement agreement and since he had a professional privilege, he didn’t report it to the authorities.
But that didn’t change the most important point…
[Juan Roberto]: That is, you acknowledge that when you arrived at the Attorney General’s Office you knew about those irregularities.
[David]: And Martínez insisted…
[Néstor Humberto]: I knew about no crime.
[David]: Even when Juan Roberto clarified it again…
[Juan Roberto]: Those aren’t irregularities. Those are crimes.
[Néstor Humberto]: When it’s known where the money ended up. Nobody knew where the money had ended up. Jorge Enrique would tell me I don’t know where that money went.
[David]: Martínez also said that in May 2018, he had decided to step away from the Odebrecht investigation because of his conflict of interest.
[Néstor Humberto]: So in this we have acted with total rigor. But the most important thing is that the investigations are carried out, by independent and autonomous prosecutors, whose defense I assume absolutely for their moral integrity. They’re irreproachable people.
[David]: But Juan Roberto questioned him for precisely having that position of power.
[Juan Roberto]: But the thing is the prosecutors who are investigating are your subordinates.
[Néstor Humberto]: Excuse me, in fact… that’s false.
[Juan Roberto]: No. Pardon me, the prosecutors who are carrying the case are… the office is next to your office, Attorney General.
[Néstor Humberto]: No, excuse me. Completely false.
[Juan Roberto]: Why?
[Néstor Humberto]: In Colombia, by mandate of the Constitution and jurisprudence, prosecutors are autonomous and independent.
[Juan Roberto]: Oh no, that’s another thing. But what I’m talking about is the bad taste that’s left with people.
[Néstor Humberto]: No, the thing is public opinion can’t be confused. No, I can’t give an order to a prosecutor in a case.
[David]: But the Constitution itself gives a lot of power and autonomy to the Attorney General of the Nation to manage the State’s investigation and prosecution machine.
After more than 40 minutes of going around the same theme, that he knew about irregularities, not crimes, and not going into the subject of Jorge Enrique and Alejandro’s deaths, the interview ended.
[Juan Roberto]: Well, Mr. Attorney General, thank you very much for having attended Noticias Caracol at this difficult time.
[Néstor Humberto]: Well I thank you and above all the severity of your questions, because it allows me to show the integrity with which my prosecutors have been acting and I assume their defense because they’re men who fulfill their duty to society and the Constitution.
[Juan Roberto]: Thank you very much, Mr. Attorney General..
[David]: Two days after that interview, on November 16, several important things happened. Among them, the revelation of a new audio.
In the next episode…
[Juanita]: But he immediately said that, he told us: but I need you to put out a statement because well people are going crazy. So I need you to put out a statement to say that you support the Attorney General’s Office investigation.
[Carolina]: They were looking, but it seemed… I don’t know, it’s like… Imagine some people like zombies, right? who are desperately looking for what to bite, what to eat.
[Juanita]: We didn’t understand that difficulty in establishing… Because there was no clarity about literally anything, about what procedures were being carried out, about when they were being carried out. If someone entered the house without us knowing, who had the bottle in their hands, who put the bottle.
[David]: To know what had happened, they had to investigate the evidence that surely remained in the house where Jorge Enrique and Alejandro died.
Credits
[David]: 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 was by Bruno Scelza and Sergio Sebastián Retavisca. Camilo Vallejo did the legal review. Sound design and mixing are by Martín Cruz, with original music by Andrés Nusser. The graphics and art direction of the series are by Diego Corzo.
Product development for La Ruta del Sol was handled by Natalia Ramírez. Digital production was done by Nelson Rauda, with support from Melisa Rabanales and Samantha Proaño, from the Radio Ambulante Studios audiences team.
Many thanks to Laura Isabel Niño, Daniel Patiño, Andrea García, Jacobo Patiño, Juanita Camacho and Esteban Patiño for lending us their voices for this episode.
La Ruta del Sol was recorded at Fiona Records.
At iHeart the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
We want to thank FLIP for their valuable support in the legal review of this production and in their advice 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 central podcast RA and subscribe to our email newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I’m David Trujillo. Thanks for listening.