Bogotá court orders Carlos Carrillo to retract allegations against former senator Trujillo
The Civil Chamber of Bogotá's Higher Court gave the former director of UNGRD 48 hours to publicly retract having called Trujillo "the mastermind of the embezzlement".
Civil Chamber revokes first-instance ruling and protects honour of former conservative senator
The Civil Chamber of Bogotá's Higher Court granted in second instance a tutela (constitutional protection action) filed by former senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo and ordered the former director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), Carlos Carrillo, to publicly retract his allegations within 48 hours, according to ifmnoticias.com.
The retraction must be made under conditions of equity, that is, with publicity equivalent to that given to Carrillo's original statements. In it, the former official must expressly state that he has no evidence or proof linking Trujillo to the corruption cases at UNGRD. The court also ordered him to refrain from repeating similar claims without evidentiary support.
The episode that gave rise to the proceedings occurred on 10 July 2026, when Carrillo, in an interview on Juanpis González's satirical programme, called Trujillo "the mastermind of the UNGRD embezzlement". According to the media outlets that reported on the ruling—Semana, El Colombiano and Infobae—the former official reiterated that link in other public forums.
For the Chamber, the contrast between those statements and what Carrillo himself declared on 16 October 2024 before the Special Instruction Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice proved decisive. In that proceeding, according to the transcript included in the sentence, Carrillo acknowledged that his knowledge of Trujillo's role was indirect, based on press information, and that if he had had documentary evidence he would have already handed it over to the authorities.
The Chamber considered it inconsistent to publicly attribute to a person participation in corruption cases whilst before the authorities admitting to having no support for that claim.
Trujillo argued that Carrillo's statements violated his honour and good name, rights protected by tutela, the constitutional mechanism that allows any citizen to request a judge's immediate protection of their fundamental rights.
In first instance, Civil Court No. 36 of Bogotá's Circuit protected only the former senator's right to petition, but denied the retraction by finding that no direct and categorical attribution of crimes had been demonstrated, and that some of the questioned content corresponded to headlines written autonomously by the media outlets. The Higher Court departed from that interpretation regarding the retraction and partially revoked that ruling.
The court confirmed the other points from first instance and ordered the file to be sent to the Constitutional Court for potential review, a standard procedure in tutela proceedings.
Trujillo, who was a representative in the Chamber and senator for the Conservative Party, had been reported to the Supreme Court for his alleged participation in the UNGRD scheme. In July 2026, the Instruction Chamber of the high court abstained from opening a formal investigation against him, concluding that the file contained no evidence, indication or proof of conduct on his part that could constitute a crime.
The UNGRD case, for which former officials of the entity and several congresspeople have been prosecuted, revolves around the alleged steering of contracts—including those for water-tanker trucks for La Guajira—and the payment of bribes to legislators.
At the close of this edition, Carrillo had not made any public statement regarding the court's decision.
Source: Google News CO — Bogotá