[Marxism] Uribe's anticorruption chief resigns

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Found this little item, appropriately, on Borev.com. Gee, I wonder  
why the guy resigned?

Uribe's anticorruption chief resigns
BY GONZALO GUILLEN
Colombia's top corruption fighter resigned Wednesday, just days after  
El Nuevo Herald reported on documents showing his father, then the  
minister of justice, had commented before his assassination in 1985  
that relatives of current President Alvaro Uribe might try to kill him.

Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, chief of the Colombian presidency's  
anticorruption program, said he was resigning for ''personal and  
family'' reasons and didn't mention the newspaper's Sunday story.

The story revolved around a Hughes-500 helicopter captured in a 1984  
raid on a huge cocaine-refining complex dubbed as Tranquilandia. The  
aircraft was registered to a company partly owned by Alberto Uribe  
Sierra, the late father of the president.

Over the past two decades, the Uribe family has steadfastly denied  
any links to the helicopter's drug work. It has said the aircraft was  
sold two months before the raid to a man later identified as an aide  
to drug traffickers. The sale was not registered because the elder  
Uribe had died and his properties had gone into his estate.

El Nuevo reported that documents gathered during the investigation of  
Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla's assassination showed he had  
commented to his sister Cecilia and Police Col. Jaime Ramírez Gómez  
that he feared he would be killed in retaliation for the raid.

Lara Bonilla ''said that the Tranquilandia thing was very grave and  
that it involved very important people in the politics of the  
country, that the helicopter that was seized . . . was owned by the  
father of Alvaro Uribe,'' Cecilia said in a sworn deposition shortly  
after her brother's death.

Ramírez García testified the justice minister expressed the same  
concerns to him about the owners of the helicopter.

Uribe did not react to Sunday story but on Wednesday the presidency  
made public a letter to El Nuevo Herald in which it described the  
report as the product of ``individuals determined to discredit  
[Colombia] and besmirch its legitimate authorities.''

''President Alvaro Uribe has refuted this infamy tens of times,'' it  
added.

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