Word: colombia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...conversation, recorded sometime during the run-up to last week's presidential election in Colombia, moves on to a casual discussion of providing candidate Ernesto Samper Pizano with 3 billion pesos, or $3.7 million, in campaign funds. "We've already talked to Medina," Rodriguez says, apparently referring to Samper's campaign manager, Santiago Medina. "We'll send around some money on Wednesday, and then the rest about Monday of next week...
...ruling Liberal Party, went on to win the election by a bare 2.2% margin over the Conservative Party's Andres Pastrana. The day after the vote, three audiotapes containing the Giraldo-Rodriguez conversations surfaced in Bogota, casting doubt on the legitimacy of Samper's victory and throwing Colombia into political turmoil. "If it is proved that the President-elect's campaign received drug-trafficking money," said Pastrana, "he should resign because his mandate would be invalid...
...before the election, when an unidentified man handed them to Pastrana during a campaign stop in Cali. Exactly who recorded the telephone conversations remains unclear. Pastrana presented them to Gaviria on June 17. The President in turn gave them to Prosecutor-General Gustavo de Greiff, the controversial director of Colombia's antinarcotics effort, to check their authenticity. After his election loss, Pastrana made them public. "Let's bring them out in the open and get to the bottom of it," he said at a news conference. That exercise required some explanation from Pastrana, whose campaign is alleged...
...drug lords in a Bogota airport ambush, but miraculously survived. For all that, allegations he and his party were accepting money from the narco-barons were so persistent that last October Gelbard traveled to Bogota to warn Samper to stay clear of their money or risk damaging U.S.-Colombia relations should he be elected...
...COLOMBIA: Tale of the Tapes...