Bilateral relations all but broke down earlier this week after Colombian President Gustavo Petro referred to Ecuador’s jailed former Vice-President Jorge Glas as a political prisoner.

In a response, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa accused Petro of meddling in internal affairs and announced 100% tariffs on Colombian imports, which were set at 50% in January over growing tensions related to bilateral efforts to combat drug trafficking.

Bilateral attempts to improve the coordination between the armed forces and eliminate the tariffs failed, Noboa suggested in a post on social media platform X.

“Unfortunately, it is impossible to reach agreements with those who do not share the same commitment to fighting narco-terrorism,” said Noboa, whose country has been suffering extreme level of violence because of the drug trade.

The Ecuadorean president added that since imposing the initial tariffs, “violent deaths on the northern border fell by 33%.”

Noboa suggested that he wouldn’t resume talks with the Colombian government until after Petro leaves office in August.

The Colombian president called the tariffs a “monstrosity” and ordered the Foreign Ministry to improve trade relations with the rest of the Americas.

Petro additionally questioned the motives of his Ecuadorean counterpart and stressed that a transport firm of Noboa family has been implicated in multiple European drug trafficking investigations.

Let them explain in Ecuador why cocaine shipments are turning up on those shady business ships; let Ecuador’s politicians explain why security at the seaports has deteriorated so much that they have become the world’s largest exporters of cocaine. Colombian drug cartels are teaming up with Ecuadorian drug cartels and with people in positions of political and economic power.

President Gustavo Petro

The Colombian president additionally reiterated concerns about an alleged US-Ecuadorean plot to fabricate drug trafficking charges against him with the help of drug traffickers from the border region.

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In a televised address to the nation, Petro announced multiple measures to prevent increased food prices and an economic slowdown, and warned the government may declare an economic emergency if these measures prove insufficient.

In response to an expected global shortage in fertilizers, which may affect Colombia’s food production, Petro announced export tariffs on fertilizers produced by Colombo-Venezuelan state firm Monomeros.

According to the president, the Venezuelan government wants fertilizers produced in the Caribbean city Barranquilla “to go to the United States and not stay in Colombia.”

Petro said he ordered state officials to prevent this and said the Trade Ministry would impose tariffs on fertilizer exports and subsidize the production of fertilizers from domestic consumption.

All fertilizer produced in Colombia remains in the country to feed the Colombian people and is subsidized. Any exports of this product must be subject to a high tariff. Specific decrees will be issued in due course, but this is the immediate measure.

Gustavo Petro

Additionally, “the export of meat can’t continue,” said the president, claiming that meat exports to China are responsible for rising meat prices in Colombia.

We’re also going to take a firm stance here, in the livestock sector. Even though we’re sacrificing our trade balance, it’s better for food prices to go down—for meat prices to go down—for all Colombians, for all families. And that can’t be done if we continue to allow exports.

Gustavo Petro

Petro’s latest policy change seek to prevent an increase in prices of basic food products, which in turn could increase poverty among vulnerable communities.

In an attempt to maintain economic growth, the president announced subsidized credits for small and medium-sized business that could be negatively affected by recent interest rate hikes decreed by the Central Bank.

The post How Colombia plants to curb effects of Middle East war, central bank interest rate hikes appeared first on Colombia News.

In the recording, an Ecuadorean official discusses a “special task force backed by the US Embassy” in Quito that seeks to revoke outstanding extradition requests for drug lords from the border region and convince them to testify against Petro.

So my job is to go to Interpol to have those alerts removed… because the gringos want to catch them—they want to catch one of these guys and make him sing against Petro. You get what I mean? We’re not really going to get involved in that, but the gringos are.

Anonymous Ecuadorean official

The conspiracy would be in retaliation of the president’s refusal to extradite a commander of drug trafficking organization “Comandos de la Frontera,” which is negotiating a possible voluntary surrender to justice.

US President Donald “Trump’s beef is that they didn’t extradite him the guy from the Commandos,” the Ecuadorean official explained.

The task force was given three months to gather evidence so that “when the term [of Petro’s presidency] ends” in August, “they’re going to come down on him with everything they’ve got, man,” said the official.

“They’ll throw in social media, journalists, everything” to justify criminal charges against Petro

The conspiracy would count on the support of bribed military officials  “who are completely at odds with the government,” according to the Ecuadorean official.

There’s a group of military personnel over there in Colombia who are completely at odds with the government. They’re even being paid—and paid well—to turn against the guy.

Anonymous Ecuadorean official

The audio was leaked by Colombian intelligence agency DNI weeks after US media reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) designated Colombia’s president as a “priority target.”

Petro has been among the most vociferous critics of US foreign policy in Latin America since before Trump took office and has been put on a blacklist for drug traffickers for his refusal to militarize his country’s efforts to curb drug trafficking.

The post US and Ecuador fabricating drug trafficking charges against Colombia’s president: audio appeared first on Colombia News.

In a post on social media platform X, Petro said Saturday that “intelligence reports” detailed “conversations between the Bautista brothers and de La Espriella, in which they discussed returning the passport contract to them in exchange for certain algorithms that would secure the presidency for de La Espriella.”

The two Bautista brothers are convicted fraudsters and the owners of Thomas Greg & Sons, the company that has been in charge of the logistics of elections for years and until recently the printing of Colombians’ passports.

In an apparent attempt to validate the president’s claim, a Twitter account that regularly publishes conveniently leaked intelligence reports published a declassified document in which intelligence agency DNI confirmed receiving an anonymous fraud complaint.

According to this complaint, De la Espriella and the Bautistas would have a “close relationship” and may be “orchestrating electoral fraud in the vote-counting records within the regionally outsourced software… and that, thanks to algorithms, they can manipulate the vote tally, altering and inflating the total number of votes for candidate De la Espriella in his favor.”

The document provided no evidence to confirm the anonymous complaint or the allegation made by Petro, whose post infuriated the far-right candidate.

“I don’t know the Bautista brothers, and if you have recordings of me, I challenge you to show them,” said De la Espriella in an initial response.

The candidate’s lawyers said that they would file criminal charges against the president before the House of Representatives’ Accusations Committee.

De la Espriella is one of two right-wing rivals of the leftist frontrunner in the election race that could make it to a run-off vote in June.

The other candidate, Senator Paloma Valencia, accused  Petro of abusing his power to manipulate voters.

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At a press conference, Avila said that the bank’s decision to increase the interest rate with one percentage point to 11.25% “will have a sustained and significant impact on the country’s economic dynamics.”

According to the minister, the board’s monetary policy “serves only the interests of a small group of investors and representatives of the financial sector.”

Avila said he would only agree to reduce the “significant distance” between the government and the central bank once the latter “understands there must be coherence with the economic and social reality of the country.”

In a separate press conference, Central Bank president Leonardo Villar said the minister would be neglecting his legal obligations if he misses the next meeting.

Villar said that the bank decided to increase the interest rate in response to relatively high inflation rate, which increased 0.1 percentage point to 5.5% in February.

According to the bank, increasing the interest rate will dampen consumption, and consequently lower the inflation rate.

The government, which follows a different economic philosophy, claims that the inflation is due to supply problems, like the war in Iran, and that increasing the interest rate will only impede economic growth.

President Gustavo Petro supported his finance minister and said that the central bank “hopes to ruin our good economy so we lose elections.”

The clashes between the bank and the government have been escalating since Petro took office in 2022 and pushed the president to suggest ending the bank’s independence, effectively forcing it to prevent ideological clashes with whoever is in government.

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According to the court, Ramirez led a criminal organization made up of government officials and State contractors that embezzled infrastructure funds and guaranteed no-show contracts for the Senator’s corporate sponsors.

The court found that the senator secured multiple National Planning Department (DNP) contracts with construction firms, for which he received kickbacks worth 10% of the value of the contracts.

The corruption plot affected the development and maintenance of road infrastructure in five of Colombia’s 32 provinces.

Colombia’s first lady, slush funds and organized crime

Proyecta’s former CEO, Pablo Cesar Herrera, became a key witness against Ramirez after prosecutors found he had been embezzling funds meant for projects successfully lobbied by Ramirez.

The prosecution additionally requested an international arrest warrant against former DNP director Pierre Garcia, also a member of the Democratic center, for his alleged role in the granting of contracts to corrupt senators.

Garcia became a suspect in corruption investigations because of a similar racket that benefitted the political ambitions and sponsors of late Senator Mario Castaño of the Liberal Party.

Castaño died in prison in December 2023 after he was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Ramirez has the opportunity to appeal the court ruling before the Supreme Court’s Cassations Chamber, which previously sentenced his father to prison because of his ties to extradited drug trafficker “Mi Sangre.”

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In a post on social media platform X, Petro said that “I accept the invitation from 200 global economists to change the global investment regime.”

Petro said that investor claims against the State should go “through Colombia’s public justice system. And if that fails, a multilateral tribunal free from local interests.”

The economists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty from France, asked Petro to withdraw from the widely criticized investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS), claiming this “poses a serious obstacle to building prosperous, equitable, and sustainable societies.”

In an open letter, the economists said that ISDS “can protect investors from unfair treatment,” but “in practice it has become a tool through which corporations can challenge non-discriminatory public policies on the basis that they affect corporate profitability, rather than because they discriminate against investors.”

“This dynamic raises significant concerns about states’ ability to regulate freely in the public interest, including in the context of climate action,” said the economists.

Written into thousands of international trade and investment treaties, including 18 agreements signed by Colombia, ISDS allows foreign corporations to bypass domestic courts and bring legal claims against host governments before special international arbitration tribunals that routinely award vast sums for alleged harms to their investments. ISDS is asymmetrical by design, granting foreign investors expansive protections that are unavailable to domestic businesses or citizens of the host country.

Economists

The economists urged the president “to begin removing Colombia from ISDS, and launching a broader alliance of countries committed to unwinding ISDS.”

Petro has previously criticized the investor protection elements and free trade deals in general, but has yet to pull out of any the treaties signed by his predecessors in an attempt to increase foreign direct investment in Colombia.

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The deluge of sexual harassment complaints followed an announcement by one of the country’s top television networks, Caracol, which said on Friday that it had “immediately activated internal protocols and procedures established by law” in response to harassment claims against two of its hosts.

The station’s main news host, Jorge Alfredo Vargas, and senior sports commentator Ricardo Orrego were initially suspended after Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino announced inspections at the television network.

But amid growing pressure, Caracol announced that Vargas and Orrego would no longer be working for the corporation.

This decision came after journalists and women who had abandoned journalism because of the abuse posted their experiences with sexual harassment at corporate media outlets on social media platform X.

Senior female journalists took the lead and began publishing testimonies of colleagues and former colleagues about sexual harassment at the country’s second largest network RCN, radio stations La FM and Blu Radio and newspapers.

Caracol Radio host Gustavo Gomez came under fire for taking photos of colleagues’ legs and posting them and inappropriate comments on social media.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that it would investigate “the complaints on social media and multiple news media about sexual harassment in the work place” of journalists at Caracol.

The prosecution additionally announced the creation of a dedicated email address “to receive complaints, direct and coordinate any necessary investigations with a gender-sensitive approach, with the aim of providing full guarantees of protection to victims, safeguarding their fundamental rights, and preventing their revictimization.”

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According to Air Force General Carlos Fernando Silva, the Hercules C130 airplane crashed shortly after taking off from an air strip in Puerto Leguizamo, a municipality on the border with Peru, around 9:50AM on Monday.

In a post on social media platform X, Silva said that the C130 has 127 people on board, 11 Air Force staff , 114 soldiers of the National Army and two police.

Security forces and locals spent much of the day on Monday trying to rescue people from the aircraft and the surrounding crash site.

Military aircraft were sent to the Peruvian border region to transported to hospital throughout Colombia.

By the end of the day, only a minority of the fatal victims had been identified, Silva said at a press conference with Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez.

In a post on social media platform X, President Gustavo Petro said he felt “a lot of pain for the lost sons” and criticized the fact that the airplane was 43-year-old scrap purchased by the previous government from the US military.

Governments that puff out their chests with nothing but feathers and sequins. They shoot bullets with their words but buy nothing but corrupt junk for the war. Why didn’t they buy a new plane, just like they buy their cars and apartments?

President Gustavo Petro

Petro additionally criticized Congress for failing to approve the government’s financing for the past two years, suggesting that this was impeding the necessary spending on defense matters.

The president and the armed forces praised locals from Puerto Leguisamo for their support in the rescue efforts.

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