Don Berna's Assets Still Don't Reach Reparation Fund l Bienes de don Berna aún no llegan al Fondo para la Reparación de las Víctimas

Medellin April 28. (IPC). Even though Diego Fernando Murillo’s (alias “Don Berna”) lawyers announced the returned of 122 assets as part of the Justice and Peace process, the truth of the matter is that these properties located in different regions of the country have not reached yet the Victims Reparation Fund.

This is according to the Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation (Acción Social) in response to a right of petition presented by the Corporación Jurídica Libertad of Medellín, which has been working in following the status of the process of reparation and what happened to the assets of the former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The Document, accounts that as up today, the Victims Reparations Fund has not received none of the assets that Murillo Bejarano has offered to return. It also clarifies that there is an ongoing title verification of two properties, one located in Montería Córdoba identified with title number 140-67792 and a second property located at Nueva Vida in Tierra Alta, Códoba identified with title number 140-8855.

“None of these properties have been returned to Acción Social because they are not titled under Diego Murillo’s name. And with regards to the last property is still pending a decision in regards to a pretension of restitution.

Law 975 or the Justice and Peace Law states that the assets returned to repair the victims, have to be approved by the prosecutors in charge of the National Unit for Justice and Peace, after which a delivery act must be subscribed between the Attorney General’s mentioned unit and Social Action legalizing the transfer. It has to be noted that Social Action is the organization in charge of managing the Victims Reparation Fund.

According to Social Action’s website, since the initiation of the Peace process with the paramilitaries and law 975 up to this date there has been only 60 acts, however none of those correspond to alias “Don Berna”.

However there is a certificate given by Prosecutor Néstor Raúl Rangel Sánchez affirming that after Murillo Bejarano’s extradition to United States he has returned 112 properties as part of the victim’s reparation process.

In an interview with the news agency IPC, the lawyer in charge of alias “Don Berna’s” defense, declared that the assets returned were 122, amounting to 20 million of dollars. “These assets have already been returned to the Attorney General’s Office and none of them are under investigation for being acquire with drug trafficking money.”

In spite of the assets being in the hands of the Attorney General’s Office, there has been no advances in taking the necessary steps to transfer those properties to Social Action and therefore to the reparations fund.

What is clear from this process is the slowness in transferring the assets from one instance to the other. As per officials in Social Action “this has happened with several of the assets announced by paramilitaries to be returned, they said that they have already given them to the Attorney General’s office but time passes and we do not receive anything.” This problem is a consequence of the absence of a regulatory time frame within the Justice and Peace law that sets a time limit between the announcement of the delivery of the assets and the actual return.

As of today Social Action does not have any scheduled meeting with the Attorney General’s office in order to formalize the return of the assets.

What is expected then is that the 122 assets that were given to the Attorney General’s Office are effectively transferred to the Reparation Fund managed by Social Action, and for prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office to stop using them as leverage when asked about the advances in the justice and peace process.

This article has been contributed by the IPC