A former spy for Colombia’s ex-intelligence agency and key witness in a wiretapping scandal with respect to the Supreme Court, stated in an interview on Monday that former President Alvaro Uribe should “respond” for his role in the scandal.
In an interview with Bogota-based radio station La FM, Alba Luz Florez stated that all the information that she collected while working for Colombia’s now-defunct intelligence agency, DAS, went directly to the president’s office, but she didn’t say whether or not Uribe was directly involved.
“The president congratulated me on one of my recordings, so I’d assume that he knew something,” she told La FM.
When asked who else above ex-Secretary General Bernardo Moreno – who was already banned from office by the Inspector General – should respond to the DAS wiretapping scandal, she mentioned that ex-President and Senator-elect Alvaro Uribe would be the primary candidate.
Alba Luz Florez, dubbed “La Mata Hari” by the Colombian media, was recently ordered by a state-level court to be compensated for the time she was banned from holding public office.
In 2012, Florez was banned from holding office for 20 years along with former DAS human resources sub-director William Gabriel Romero by Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez.
MORE: Colombian spy agents barred from service for wiretapping Supreme Court
The DAS carried out the surveillance to find out how a judge was protecting a Colombian who allegedly had “inside” information on the FARC, according to La FM.
This scandal was one of the major reasons for the dismantling of the organization in exchange for a new agency with basically the same functions, the CTI.
The DAS scandal is one of the major scandals that hit the administration of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), which has jailed or banned from office several of his closest advisers.
