Colombia’s Supreme Court granted bail on Friday, 9 October, to two of the country’s most senior former legislators after the state failed to begin their bribery trial before the legal deadline. Iván Leónidas Name Vásquez, a former Senate president, and Andrés David Calle Aguas, a former House of Representatives president, had been held since 7 May 2025. The deadline was 12 months. It expired on Wednesday, 7 October 2026.
The Ruling
The court’s Special First Instance Chamber, which tries members of Congress, granted a request from the men’s defence lawyers. Its order, Auto AEP140-2026, applies Article 365 of Law 600 of 2000, the criminal procedure code governing the case. The rule allows release when a trial hasn’t opened six months after charges become final. The limit extends to 12 months when the court has ordered evidence from abroad. The charges became final on 7 October 2025.
The chamber was blunt about where the fault lay: nowhere. It said its own negligence hadn’t caused the delay, nor had defence stalling tactics. Since March, it had heard 12 witnesses and worked to obtain documents ordered as evidence. The clock simply ran out first.
That’s the point worth pausing on. A statutory time limit exists to keep the state from holding citizens indefinitely while it assembles its case. Here, two men spent roughly a year and five months in custody, and the trial still hasn’t begun.
Conditions of Release
Release isn’t automatic. Each man must post bail of 10 monthly minimum wages, or 17,509,050 pesos (about US$5,400), payable in cash or through an insurance policy. Each must sign a written commitment and tell the court exactly where it can find him. Breaking the conditions could bring a fine and loss of release.
La Picota prison in southern Bogotá, where authorities held both men, must first check that no other authority wants them. The parties may challenge the order through reconsideration or an appeal. It’s unknown when the men will walk out, and the court has set no date for the trial hearing.
The Allegations
The case stems from alleged corruption at the UNGRD, Colombia’s national disaster risk management unit, which handles relief after floods, droughts and earthquakes. The alleged scheme took place under former president Gustavo Petro, who governed from 2022 to 2026. The indictment says senior officials in Petro’s government agreed in September 2023 to pay the heads of both congressional chambers to back pension and health reforms.
Prosecutors allege the money changed hands between 12 and 14 October 2023. Name was allegedly to receive 3 billion pesos (about US$927,000) and Calle 1 billion pesos (about US$309,000). The indictment says the cash came from a loan that officials later repaid with a kickback from a contract for 40 water trucks meant for La Guajira, a desert region on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. That contract was worth 46.8 billion pesos (about US$14.5 million).
Olmedo López and Sneyder Pinilla, the agency’s former director and deputy director, are key witnesses. Name and Calle reject the accusations and remain presumed innocent unless a court rules otherwise. In a separate case, a court has barred Name from Congress for life over absences from Senate debates on pension reform.
A Case Still Waiting on Evidence
This wasn’t the first attempt. In April, the same chamber refused to release the pair, ruling that the deadline was 12 months rather than six. The Supreme Court’s Criminal Cassation Chamber upheld that decision on 22 July. Now the 12 months are up.
Pending evidence includes testimony from Carlos Ramón González, who headed the presidency’s administrative department under Petro. González is also under investigation in the scandal and has been in Nicaragua for more than two years. It’s unknown whether he’ll testify. INPEC, Colombia’s prison service, has separately ordered López and Pinilla transferred to La Picota from military bases.
The court’s decision concerns release pending the case. It doesn’t clear either man. No verdict date has been set, and it’s unknown whether any party will challenge the release.
Why This Matters:
The ruling shows a procedural guardrail doing its job. Deadlines on pretrial detention protect individual liberty. They bind the state even when the accused are powerful and the allegations grave. Still, the outcome stings for anyone who wants answers on the alleged diversion of disaster-relief money tied to a government’s legislative agenda. A trial that can’t start within 12 months, partly because evidence sits abroad, raises hard questions about how efficiently Colombia’s institutions can prosecute complex public-corruption cases. Whether the trial moves quickly now, and whether witnesses like González appear, will shape public trust in both the courts and the political class.