Via the AP: Colombian authorities initiate manhunt for former defense minister
Colombian authorities have initiated an international hunt for a former defense minister after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction for stealing almost US$500,000 from a presidential campaign.Fernando Botero Zea — son of famed painter Fernando Botero — is convicted of aggravated theft for pocketing the money from the 1994 campaign of Ernesto Samper, whose drug-tainted election bid he ran, and must serve a 30-month jail sentence.
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Botero, who is believed to be outside the country, already served a five-year sentence in the last decade for his involvement in the Andean nation’s worst drug-corruption scandal.
In August 1996, he was forced to resign as defense minister and was immediately jailed when it was revealed he accepted millions of dollars in donations on behalf of Samper’s campaign from the Cali cartel.
It is a bizarre tale, especially given that Botero has such an internationally well-know father and was himself on the fast-track to prominence in the Liberal Party. I interviewed Botero during my first trip to Colombia in 1992 when he was in the Senate and briefly encountered him at a reception at the University of the Andes in 1994.