The Attorney General's Office announced on Tuesday that Alba Luz Flórez Gélvez, also known as Mata Hari, is believed to have taken nearly US$50,000 from the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) between 2007 and 2009. She justified the withdrawals with fake invoices and other documents. Flórez Gélvez allegedly gave some of the money to general service personnel, bodyguards, and drivers at the Supreme Court in exchange for obtaining records and files from the court.
The former detective was particularly interested in information about "parapolitics" cases, a term in Colombia referring to cases involving extreme right-wing illegal armed groups, or paramilitaries, and their links to public officials in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Colombian government.
Known for illegal wiretapping scandals and links to paramilitary groups, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) has been dismantled, and its functions were distributed to the Attorney General's Office, the National Police, and the Special Administrative Unit for Migration Colombia.
“InSight Crime wrote back in 2011, “Agents from the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) were implicated in a scheme which involved the sale of intelligence to drug trafficking organizations. Colombian newsweekly Semana gained access to the leaked documents, and revealed that the agency had trained paramilitaries in the use of explosives and helped orchestrate a car bomb targeting a prominent politician during the administration of Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe.”
Flórez Gélvez will be tried for embezzlement, ideological misrepresentation in public documents, and procedural fraud. The judge set the start of the preliminary hearings for April.
Colombian prosecutors charged a former detective with Colombia's security service for stealing money from her department and using it to pay bribes to employees of the Supreme Court in exchange for information about cases relating to links between paramilitaries and public officials.
The Attorney General's Office announced on Tuesday that Alba Luz Flórez Gélvez, aka Mata Hari, is believed to have taken between 2007 and 2009 nearly US$50,000 from the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), justifying the withdrawals with fake invoices and other documents. She gave some of the money to general service personnel, bodyguards and drivers at the Supreme Court who obtain for her records and files from the court.
What the former detective was particularly interested in were information about so-called "parapolitics" cases - a popular term in the country that relates to cases involving extreme right-wing illegal armed groups, or paramilitaries, and their links to public officials in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Colombian government.
Alba Luz Flórez Gélvez will be tried for embezzlement, ideological misrepresentation in public documents and procedural fraud. The judge set the start of the preliminary hearings for April.
Known for illegal wiretapping scandals and links to paramilitary groups, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) has been dismantled and its functions were distributed to the Attorney General's Office, the National Police and the Special Administrative Unit for Migration Colombia.
“Agents from the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) were implicated in a scheme which involved the sale of intelligence to drug trafficking organizations. Colombian newsweekly Semana gained access to the leaked documents, and revealed that the agency had trained paramilitaries in the use of explosives, and helped orchestrate a car bomb targeting a prominent politician during the administration of Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe,” InSight Crime wrote back in 2011.
