Fonade ex-official sentenced to prison for contract fraud

Felipe Rodríguez Mariano, a former official of the Financial Fund for Development Projects (Fonade), has been sentenced to five years and four months in prison for undue interest in the celebration of contracts.

The conviction follows an investigation into a 2017 procurement process for the audit and supervision of a free housing project involving 4,678 homes across nine Colombian departments. Prosecutors demonstrated that while serving on the Proposal Evaluation Committee, Rodríguez Mariano improperly assisted a specific consortium by identifying errors in their commercial offer and advising them on how to correct them.

Despite the consortium's proposal being rejected twice in April 2017, Rodríguez Mariano facilitated deadline extensions and influenced other committee members to favor the bidder. This resulted in the signing of a contract valued at approximately 16.6 billion pesos to oversee the housing project.