Petro denounces setup in alleged chats of his son disclosed by presidential candidate

Bogotá.- Colombian President Gustavo Petro denied this Sunday the authenticity of alleged WhatsApp messages released by journalist and pre-presidential candidate Vicky Dávila, in which there is talk of alleged excesses of his at a party during his 2022 campaign, and assured that they are “edited words” to manipulate public opinion. Dávila, who registered his citizen movement ‘Valientes’ in June, published a statement in which he affirmed that he had access to private conversations between the president’s son, Nicolás Petro, and his ex-wife, Daysuris Vásquez, a key witness in the judicial process facing the president’s eldest son for alleged money laundering and illicit enrichment.

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According to Dávila, those conversations, which are supposedly part of the Prosecutor’s Office file, describe “disorderly behaviors” of the current president in which women and financiers of his campaign were allegedly involved, and a video that would compromise his public image is mentioned. “There are no videos, friends, only one that does not contain images, but edited words. There are no transvestites, nor ‘everything else'”, the president assured on his X account, alluding to one of the phrases from the alleged chats.  The president described the episode as “a crude and horrifying attempt to confuse celebration with crime” and denounced the attempt to hide “the truth about the most serious crimes committed against humanity in Colombia.” In his extensive message, the head of state lashed out at what he called a “new concept of wandering journalism” and suggested that the controversy is driven by sectors seeking to “fill with patterns” the media and institutions. The president’s response also seems to indirectly allude to former President Álvaro Uribe, sentenced this week in the first instance to twelve years of house arrest, whom Petro referred to as “the landowner” whose residence “has become a prison”.  “The reality of seeing the estate turned into a prison has driven so many people to mental intoxication,” wrote the president. For his part, Nicolás Petro also published a video today in which he calls the images shared by Dávila a “vile setup.” According to him, the conversations disclosed do not match the format generated by the forensic extraction made by the Prosecutor’s Office to his ex-wife’s phone, and present “alterations of dates and names”. “The green color of the name in the images indicates that the capture would have been made from my cell phone, which is false, because the extracted device was Daysuris’s,” said Nicolás Petro, who added that they were not even mutually saved on WhatsApp with the names that appear in the supposed captures. Vicky Dávila, 52 years old, built a career as a journalist in radio and television and directed Semana magazine until 2023, when she resigned to enter politics. In June, she registered her signature collection committee with the National Registry to run for President in 2026 as an independent right-wing candidate.