At the end of her first series of work meetings in this city with high-level authorities from the United States and the Inter-American Human Rights System, the Attorney General, Luz Adriana Camargo Garzón, ratified the recent commitments she made to strengthen the cooperation against transnational crime and to lead in Colombia changes in criminal investigation and analysis through approaches based on the capabilities of the Office of the Attorney General’s work force, to combat crime from the origin of criminal finances and to make the best use of new technologies.
After agreeing with these institutions that the action of justice and police authorities must be transformed to adequately respond to the interconnection and expansion that criminal organizations have achieved, especially in times of the pandemic, the Attorney General set the immediate implementation of several information exchange mechanisms and communication channels and provided the possibility of creating international joint judicial work teams.
The Attorney General’s agenda was carried out at the United States Department of Justice, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the diplomatic headquarters of Colombia in Washington.
She met with the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick B. Garland, and the head of the Criminal Division, Nicole Argentieri, at the Department of Justice with the purpose of strengthening judicial cooperation ties and exchange of experiences.
Likewise, she held meetings with the Assistant Secretary – Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), Todd D. Robinson; and the Director of National Drug Control Policy, Rahul Gupta, to agree on innovative mechanisms that consolidate bilateral work to restrain actions of transnational criminal networks.
She also met with FBI representation for Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador; the Deputy Chief of the Office of the United States Border Patrol, David BeMiller; Chief of Law Enforcement Operations, Walter Slosar; the deputy director of the Secret Service (USSS), Ron Rowe; Executive Director of International Operations – Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Mary Hammond; IRS Acting Deputy Director of Global Operations, Yury Kruty; the Deputy Executive Associate Director of the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Patrick McElwain; and Department of Labor (DOL) Associate Deputy Undersecretary, Molly McCoy.
On the other hand, she held work meetings with the deputy executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), María Claudia Pulido; and representatives of the National Government in the United States, such as the ambassador, Daniel Ávila; the consul general, Kandya Gisella Obezo Casseres and the Colombian ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Ernesto Vargas.
The information contained in this press release corresponds to the narration of the objective news provided by the officials in charge of carrying out criminal investigations within the Office of the Attorney General. By the time this communication is disclosed, the legal status of the people mentioned is still pending to be resolved by the competent judicial authority, always under the presumption of innocence contemplated by Article 29 of the Political Constitution and Article 7 of Law 906 of 2004.