President Gustavo Petro affirms that he became president "only to achieve more social justice in my country. That is what moves and obsesses me. | Photo: rcn

Bogota, June 5 (RHC)-- The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has firmly denied that he had anything to do with receiving payments from drug trafficking.

The president assured that his electoral campaign did not receive money from drug trafficking, nor has his government done anything illegal.  In that sense, Petro said: "I do not accept blackmail, nor do I see politics as a space for personal favors", he said in a publication in digital networks.

"An intelligence agency in the Duque government illegally recorded all the conversations made in Zoom during all the months of my campaign and they were published in Semana.  They were never able to publish even one minute in which I said something illegal or irregular."

Petro responded to statements attributed to former ambassador Armando Benedetti, who, according to a Colombian publication opposed to the government, had threatened to reveal secrets of the presidential campaign, upset by the treatment received, in conversations with the now former chief of staff, Laura Sarabia.

Sarabia is a young lawyer who worked with Benedetti when he was a senator.  She was an advisor in the presidential campaign and later Chief of Cabinet until the scandal was uncovered for an alleged illegal interrogation and interceptions of his former daughter-in-law for an alleged money theft.