Petro’s Spy Chief Secretly Met Colombia’s Top Smuggler

The Petro Papá Pitufo scandal has escalated into the most damaging corruption crisis of the Colombian president’s term, after Noticias Caracol aired recordings that reveal secret negotiations between the government’s intelligence apparatus and the country’s most wanted smuggler — 53 days before the presidential election, Infobae, El Tiempo, and Semana reported.

The recordings, totaling more than 90 minutes, capture two closed-door meetings in early 2025 between Jorge Lemus — then director of Colombia’s National Intelligence Directorate, or DNI — and Luis Felipe Ramírez, attorney for Diego Marín Buitrago, alias Papá Pitufo, a man the Fiscalía considers Colombia’s largest contraband operator. In the tapes, Lemus can be heard offering security guarantees, low-profile treatment, and favorable interventions with prosecutors — benefits that lie outside the legal authority of an intelligence chief.

What the Audios Reveal

The Noticias Caracol investigation identifies at least four government emissaries who contacted Marín’s legal circle, allegedly acting under presidential authorization. Beyond Lemus, the recordings name Ramón Devesa, a Catalan cybersecurity consultant linked to Petro’s 2022 campaign; Isaac Beltrán, a former adviser at the financial intelligence unit UIAF who publicly confirmed attending a meeting with Marín’s representatives in Spain in April 2024; and Augusto Rodríguez, director of the National Protection Unit, who previously acknowledged on live television that smuggling money had tried to penetrate Petro’s presidential campaign.

The most politically explosive segment involves the $500 million peso question. During the 2022 campaign, Marín allegedly funneled COP 500 million (roughly $115,000 at current rates) to Petro’s operation through Devesa. The government has long claimed the money was returned, but Lemus himself cast doubt on that claim in the recordings. He told Semana he saw a video of the supposed handback but questioned whether the small suitcase could have contained the full amount. Meanwhile, in a separate audio excerpt, Lemus indicated that Marín had attempted to inject up to COP 10 billion (~$2.3 million) into the campaign — an offer he says was blocked on Petro’s direct orders.

Perhaps most damaging is a passage in which Lemus appears to suggest that Marín could be folded into the government’s “Total Peace” framework — a negotiation structure designed for armed groups — as a way to shield him from U.S. extradition, which federal prosecutors in New York are actively pursuing. Marín’s lawyer responded with a line that has since become the scandal’s defining quote: if his client were to speak freely, the consequences for the government would amount to a political catastrophe.

Petro’s Defense — and Its Contradictions

The president responded through his press office and then in an extended post on X. His core argument: all intelligence contacts with Marín’s circle were authorized for the sole purpose of bringing the smuggler back to Colombia to face justice. Petro admitted that Marín had tried to finance his campaign and said he personally ordered the money blocked. He then pivoted to offense, accusing the Fiscalía of deliberately sabotaging Marín’s extradition from Portugal and limiting its investigation to events after 2023 — thereby ignoring nearly four decades of state infiltration.

The defense has significant gaps. If the contacts were purely institutional, critics ask, why did Lemus offer judicial benefits he had no authority to grant? Why did the intelligence chief record the meetings himself — a move he told Semana was self-protection against future bribery accusations? And why does Petro’s own former intelligence director now express doubt about whether the campaign actually returned the smuggler’s money? Lemus told Blu Radio the meetings were official and documented. Marín’s lawyer told Noticias Caracol the opposite: that the meetings were convened by the government with direct presidential authorization and held at DNI headquarters.

Electoral Shockwave

The timing could not be worse for the governing coalition. The latest presidential polls show Petro’s chosen successor, leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, leading at 35% ahead of the May 31 first round. But the scandal has already forced Cepeda into damage control: he publicly rejected reports that Lemus would join his campaign team, telling El Tiempo the former intelligence chief had no role in his operation.

The contamination may run deeper. The audios mention Senator Alexander López, a recently reinstated lawmaker who serves as Cepeda’s key alliance coordinator, as one of the individuals who carried messages between the government and Marín. Cepeda has not addressed the López connection directly. From the opposition, in a campaign already marked by assassinations and armed group threats, presidential candidate Paloma Valencia demanded an ad hoc prosecutor be appointed and asked Congress’s accusation commission to intervene. Centrist candidate Claudia López framed the scandal as evidence that smuggling money bought favors from the presidency.

The Centro Democrático, Álvaro Uribe‘s party, called the revelations an institutional wound. Congressman-elect Daniel Briceño, the highest-voted legislator in the March congressional elections, demanded to know where the supposed video proving the $500 million was returned had gone. The party questioned why the Fiscalía had remained silent despite being named in the recordings, and demanded an independent investigation.

Who Is Papá Pitufo?

Diego Marín Buitrago, born in Palestina, Caldas in 1962, began as a small-time shoe and liquor smuggler before building what authorities describe as the network responsible for roughly 80% of Colombia’s maritime contraband — an operation generating an estimated COP 8 trillion (~$1.8 billion) annually. The Fiscalía charged him in absentia in November 2025 with bribery and criminal conspiracy, alleging he paid approximately COP 915 million in bribes to public officials over decades. His network is accused of infiltrating Colombia’s tax authority (DIAN) and the customs police (Polfa) to facilitate shipments through Buenaventura and Barranquilla.

Marín was captured in Valencia, Spain in 2024 after Colombia requested his extradition. A Spanish judge granted him provisional release, which he used to flee to Portugal. He was recaptured in Lisbon in December 2024, then freed again on habeas corpus in June 2025 and filed for political asylum. He remains in Portugal, effectively beyond Colombia’s reach. In March 2026, authorities arrested several alleged members of his network, including four former police officers and Freddy Camilo Gómez Castro, a Senate candidate from the Party of the U — a coalition member of Petro’s government.

A Pattern, Not an Isolated Scandal

The Papá Pitufo audios are the latest in a cascade of scandals that have eroded Petro’s government in its final months. In February, the president alleged cocaine was planted in his motorcade to sabotage his summit with Donald Trump — a claim intelligence sources could not corroborate. In March, the New York Times and Associated Press revealed that U.S. federal prosecutors had opened separate criminal probes into Petro’s alleged ties to drug traffickers. His son Nicolás faces money laundering charges. His 2022 campaign manager, Ricardo Roa, has been indicted for campaign finance violations. And Colombia now faces the threat of a fourth credit downgrade as rating agencies weigh the fiscal trajectory against the electoral calendar.

For Cepeda, the challenge is existential: how to inherit the left’s organizational infrastructure while shedding the corruption scandals attached to the man who built it. For the opposition, the audios are ammunition in a campaign that was already about competence and order versus continuity and reform. And for Colombia’s institutions, the question the Fiscalía’s own chief raised is now unavoidable: when the intelligence apparatus offers judicial deals that only courts can authorize, who is actually running the state?