The videos of the former ambassador in Caracas made Petr nervous

A ticking time bomb for the Colombian government Gustavo Petro. He, until Friday, the ambassador in Caracas, Armando Benedettihe sowed strong doubts about possible irregularities in the election campaign that led the president to victory in 2022, through some audio recordings sent, also by this Friday, to the left-wing leader’s chief of staff, Laura Sarabiawith which he maintains a power dispute that is bleeding the executive branch and paralyzing the legislative agenda.

“I won’t allow myself to smoke a dick [vacilar]Laura, I swear on my children’s lives that this will never happen. We are all sinking. Were done. we’re going to jailwe finished everything son of a bitch a dick,” says Benedetti, a center-right politician who is the former head of Peter’s campaign and who mediated with the elites who renounce the left-wing leader so that he can come to power, in one of the audio recordings leaked to the magazine Week. In all of them, he speaks in a very angry and angry tone against Peter and the former chief of staff.

This is a new chapter in the scandal that arose last week, when the same magazine announced that Sarabija’s nanny was subjected to a polygraph test in the presidential palace after stealing a briefcase with $4,000 in daily allowances from the Government of the House. the then 29-year-old chief of staff, who had been Benedetti’s trusted adviser for seven years before taking office. A nanny also worked at his home and traveled to Caracas on a chartered flight valued at 5,000 euros in the days before the report was published.

In between, the loud anger of the former ambassador who considers himself an exile and is looking for a place in the Government. A few weeks ago, Petro gave his approval for his appointment as super minister, but Benedetti believes that Sarabia was holding back and delaying the articulation of his newly created position, and at that moment a war broke out between the two, aggravated by the knowledge that the nanny was subjected to illegal wiretapping by the State Police, without knowing who gave the order to have her phone tapped.

“I held a hundred meetings, I gave 15,000 million pesos [unos 3,3 millones de euros, a la campaña de Petro]. If it’s not for me, they don’t win.”, Benedetti says in the audio. “The moment I say who gave the money here on the coast, I know that shit, you who don’t know anything about history, read how it is [proceso] 8,000, that’s the key to everything (…) And if you think that’s blackmail, that’s the answer to the form son of a bitch you,” he added, referring to the trial against former liberal president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) for bringing drug money into his election campaign.

On Friday, Petro fired Sarabia and Benedetti from the government, who insists the audio recordings were manipulated, but in an interview this weekend went so far as to suggest the president was a cocaine user.

He leaderwho lost six popularity points in barely a month and saw his project for total peace falter, assured this Monday that does not accept “blackmail” and that “No campaign money was received from people connected to the drug trade.”

Now the soap opera between Sarabia and Benedetti, who accused former Interior Minister Alfonso Prada and former Galician-born Congress president Roy Barreras of corruption, has paralyzed the legislative agenda, as the opposition refuses to debate until the scandal is cleared up, and this session ends in two weeks. .