Colombian Court Strikes Down Former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s Convictions Over Witness Tampering

Colombian Court Strikes Down Former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s Convictions Over Witness Tampering

A Colombian court announced on Tuesday the acquittal of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez on the charges of fraud and bribery, for which he had been under investigation for seven years.

The Superior Court of Bogotá thus overturned the sentence of 12 years of house arrest that Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia had issued in August, annulling the process against the former head of state, who would have become the first in the country’s history to be found guilty in a criminal case.

The politician was also absolved of his disqualification from holding public office for 8 years, 4 months, and 20 days, and the payment of a fine equivalent to 2,420 current legal minimum wages.

One of the fundamental aspects of the ruling was that the Court determined that the recordings presented by the plaintiff as key evidence were illegal, as it considered them to constitute a violation of the accused’s privacy. In fact, it stated that the “involuntary error” of intercepting Uribe’s phone instead of that of Congressman Nilton Córdoba was actually “gross negligence.”

“The involuntary error does not attribute to the unlawfulness, as the interception was supported by erroneous data, and discovering belatedly that the number did not belong to Córdoba does not constitute an unexpected finding, but gross negligence,” said Judge Manuel Antonio Merchán, who nonetheless upheld the legality of the telephone interceptions between Uribe and his former lawyer Diego Cadena, considering that there were no irregularities in their obtaining.

Furthermore, the magistrates considered there to be an absence of evidence linking Uribe to the crimes of which he was accused, as well as a lack of direct criminal intent (dolo directo).

“In this case, the meeting between Mario Uribe, Diego Cadena, and Álvaro Uribe does not prove any instruction for the commission of crimes. There is no evidence of functional subordination nor that the penal mandate contract implied criminally relevant obedience. The interceptions show that Cadena was reporting on actions already carried out, without any indication of pressure or criminal inducement by the accused. Mario Uribe only facilitated the contact and does not know the content of the conversation. Cadena did not testify, and the accused only acknowledged having received information about judicial processes. The evidence presented does not prove the malicious link required to qualify Álvaro Uribe Vélez as the mastermind of a punishable conduct,” Merchán added in this regard.

Despite being a second-instance ruling, the decision can still be appealed and remitted to the Supreme Court of Justice, where the Criminal Chamber must analyze whether to accept it or not.

The case against the former president dates back to 2011, when Senator Iván Cepeda met with former paramilitaries Juan Guillermo Monsalve and Pablo Hernán Sierra, who accused Uribe of allegedly having contributed to the creation of the paramilitary group Bloque Metro and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).

Based on their testimonies, Cepeda charged the then-Senator in Congress, while Uribe responded with a complaint to the Supreme Court. After years of investigation, in 2018, the magistrates decided to dismiss the accusation against Cepeda and, instead, initiated a case against Uribe for witness tampering.

In fact, in August 2020, the former president was arrested due to alleged “risks of obstruction of justice,” which kept him behind bars for 66 days.

During that time, Uribe resigned his seat in the Senate, thus losing his privileges, and his case had to be referred to the ordinary justice system. Upon receiving the case, the Prosecutor’s Office requested its closure due to lack of evidence, although the requests were repeatedly denied on the grounds that certain indications justified moving forward.

In 2024, under the presidency of Gustavo Petro, the new Attorney General Adriana Camargo once again launched the call for trial, and little more than a year later, on August 1, 2025, Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia sentenced the former president to the penalty that was annulled today.

Specifically, the magistrate then considered that the politician instigated and promoted a series of illegal actions whose purpose was to discredit the testimonies of the case witnesses, to alter judicial statements in his favor. She also stated that the former head of state ordered his lawyer, Diego Cadena, to make visits to La Picota prison and to prepare letters from inmates in Cómbita against Senator Cepeda, to reopen the archived process.

The defense responded accusing Heredia of partiality, denouncing the use of intercepted calls as evidence, and filling an appeal with the Superior Court of Bogotá, which, on August 19, determined that Uribe should await Tuesday’s second-instance ruling in freedom, “protected by the fundamental right to individual liberty.”

The court’s decision this Tuesday comes at the very start of the electoral campaign in which Uribe has already announced his candidacy as the 25th senator on the Centro Democrático list, which will also announce its presidential candidate in November.

In this context, Uribe has, in fact, been key in trying to unite the right amid growing internal divisions and the consolidation of other candidates from the Pacto Histórico and third independent factions.

Therefore, the Court’s ruling not only has a personal impact on the former president but also injects a notable boost into the right-wing framework, opening a new chapter in Colombian politics that, in a few months, will have to define the strength and direction it will take for the country’s future.