Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said Wednesday that “justice is being served” in Colombia following the first-instance conviction of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010) for the crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud. “It’s something, at least,” Cabello commented during his weekly program Con el Mazo Dando, broadcast on VTV.

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The Chavista leader described as a “big step” the fact that the Colombian judiciary dared to declare Uribe guilty, even though the former president may serve his sentence under house arrest.

“All of them get money from drug trafficking,” Cabello stated, before reading social media messages expressing support for Uribe from Venezuelan far-right opposition figures such as Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma—both exiled in Spain—as well as from María Corina Machado.

“Anyone who defends a drug trafficker like Álvaro Uribe is either on his payroll or was on his payroll, and I’m making a list,” said the Interior Minister.

On this line, Cabello has repeatedly denounced Uribe’s funding of criminal acts in Venezuela. On May, the official explained that funding for “conspiracies and terrorism” in Venezuela came “directly from Colombian drug trafficking,” and named former presidents Iván Duque (2018–2022), Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018), Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), and Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002) as the “heads” of those structures.

The text reads: Historic! Colombian court sentences Uribe to nine years in prison. On Monday, July 28, the Colombian Attorney General’s Office requested nine years of house arrest for the father of paramilitarism, Álvaro Uribe, and also imposed a million-dollar fine for the…

Uribe became on Monday the first former Colombian president to be convicted in a criminal case that originated from a complaint he himself filed in 2012. He had accused leftist Congressman Iván Cepeda of witness tampering, as Cepeda was preparing a Senate complaint against him for ties to paramilitary groups.

However, Justice José Luis Barceló, who received the complaint, chose not to investigate Cepeda and instead launched a probe into Uribe for allegedly manipulating witnesses to keep them from testifying against him.

Judge Sandra Heredia, of Bogotá’s 44th Criminal Circuit Court, is scheduled to read Uribe’s sentence this Friday. He faces between four and eight years in prison.

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