The Attorney General’s Office of the Nation arrested 13 people this Tuesday who are accused of forming a corruption scheme, in which they allegedly used the Sierra Nevada mixed fund to divert more than 3 trillion pesos (about 930 million dollars) of royalty resources — the money the State receives from the extraction of oil, coal, and other minerals. The amount is equivalent to 10% of the resources that Congress approved to invest in the regions during 2025 and 2026. The network was so extensive that the arrests took place in simultaneous operations in Bogotá, Cartagena, Valledupar, Sogamoso, Pereira, and Villavicencio. The mayor of María La Baja (Bolívar) and the former mayor of La Paz (Cesar) are among those detained, along with former executives, the fiscal auditor, and supervisors of the fund, an entity that combines public and private capital operating under private law.
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The Attorney General’s Office has announced the opening of formal investigations against five governors for the same scheme: Óscar Enrique Sánchez (Amazonas), María Margarita Guerra Zúñiga (Magdalena), Luis Alfredo Gutiérrez García (Vaupés), Fulberto Guevara (Vichada), and Ferney López Martínez (Guaviare). Additionally, it included former governors Rafael Alejandro Martínez, of Magdalena, and Álvaro León Flores, of Vichada.
On its website, the Sierra Nevada Fund is described as an entity with an “agile and transparent structure” that acts as a “strategic ally for public and private entities.” It boasts having obtained the number one position in management among decentralized entities, according to the National Planning Department, in 2022 and 2023. According to the Attorney General’s Office, the scheme would have managed to “concentrate the execution of nearly 480 projects” in 19 departments, in a varied portfolio: infrastructure, education, water and sanitation, health, energy, rural housing, sports, environment, and risk management. The logic is that officials used the fund to direct resources to allied contractors, with whom they then shared the money obtained from alleged overcharges.
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To sustain the scheme, says the Attorney General’s Office, they would have relied on the fund’s internal rules: a proprietary contracting manual that allowed contracts to be awarded “to third parties and even to members of the same organization, with the purpose of maintaining control over the execution of resources.” Everything was supported by “false documents, minutes, and records” that “misled various authorities to evade controls over public contracting.” The detainees will be charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit a crime and embezzlement by appropriation to document forgery and undue interest in contract execution. The case is handled by the Special Task Group created by the Attorney General’s Office to pursue corruption in the General Royalty System, which from 2012 until December 2025 has distributed 115 trillion pesos throughout the country.
Sierra Nevada is not an isolated case. In April, the Attorney General’s Office dismantled a network in Barranquilla that allegedly directed royalty contracts worth 496 billion pesos. Regarding Sierra Nevada itself, CAMBIO magazine had revealed that the Comptroller’s Office documented how 20 individuals with no labor ties to the fund supervised 45 projects and approved million-dollar payments “without having the legal authority to do so.” The National Planning Department identified, in 2025, that 15.7 trillion were at risk in royalty projects with alleged irregularities.
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