A top Colombian intelligence official has resigned after a scandal erupted over accusations rogue security agents on the payroll of drug lords had illegally wiretapped politicians, judges and journalists.
The telephone bugging charges are the latest scandal to rock the state security agency, known as DAS, and will further stain president Alvaro Uribe’s campaign to stamp out corruption in state law enforcement in the world’s top cocaine supplier.
Attorney general Mario Iguaran on Sunday ordered his investigators to sweep into the DAS headquarters in Bogota to search for evidence of criminal activity by agents who had intercepted and monitored telephone calls.
Deputy director of DAS counterintelligence Jorge Alberto Lagos resigned shortly afterwards over the scandal, likely to add to pressure on President Barack Obama’s administration as it reviews Colombia’s military aid and pending free trade pact. DAS director Felipe Munoz said he had accepted Mr Lagos’s decision to step down, although no evidence showed he was directly involved in crimes.
The latest accusations were first made by news magazine Semana in a report on DAS agents intercepting the phone calls of well-known journalists, politicians and magistrates to sell information to drug traffickers and armed gangs.
Defence minister Juan Manuel Santos told local radio the intelligence agents were probably in the pay of drug smugglers, but opposition leaders questioned those claims, saying Mr Uribe’s administration would benefit most from the recordings.
Mr Uribe, a strong ally of the US, has received billions of dollars in aid from Washington to help his fight against drug lords and guerrillas. Violence and kidnappings from Colombia’s four-decade conflict have declined sharply.
But officials in the armed forces and police agents are still often accused of taking bribes from drug lords. The justice minister’s brother, a prosecutor in Medellin, was arrested last year in a probe into suspected drug ties.
The new scandal came to light just four months after the former intelligence director quit having admitted agents had spied on opponents of Mr Uribe, a hardliner popular for his crackdown on rebel group Farc.