Julián Bedoya, the senator who would have cheated to graduate as a lawyer, will remain under investigation by the Supreme Court

After Senator Julián Bedoya was summoned to the Supreme Court of Justice in April 2021 to answer for irregularities in his law degree , on the morning of this Wednesday, 23 March, the Instruction Chamber of the High Court announced that it opened a criminal investigation against him on the same subject.

According to what the Court announced, Bedoya will be investigated for the alleged crimes of falsehood in private and public documents and procedural fraud, after they will collect, for almost a year, all the information and evidence necessary to open the investigation against the congressman.

It should be noted that during 2021, the University of Medellín - from which the Antioquia congressman graduated - asked that Bedoya's law degree be declared null and void, after it was shown that he would have taken advantage of his position as senator to present several exams that were pending almost 10 years ago before graduating as a litigator.

For that reason, before the Supreme Court of Justice, Bedoya must explain and demonstrate how he managed to receive his university degree and whether his election as a Liberal Party congressman allowed him to access that undergraduate degree.

After learning about the university's decision, Bedoya stated that this is a “systematic persecution” within the University of Medellín and described the resolution of his alma mater as illegal, arbitrary and without foundation.

What is more, what was announced by the academy was not the only irregularity in the achievement of his title. The university of the capital Paisa found that the parliamentarian took 17 examinations between preparatory and sufficient to skip classes and passed them. Bedoya even presented up to 7 tests in a single day, all with excellent results.

However, the intellectual feat was not such. The UdeM Special Commission, which carried out the investigation, determined that at least six officials of the institution overstepped their limits to irregularly endorse the evaluation of Bedoya even though they did not hold the subjects evaluated.

One of them was Professor John Mario Ferrer Murillo, who apart from endorsing all the Bedoya Pulgarín high schools, included it in an investigation he conducted in 2018 and which the senator presented as a degree project.

This whole issue also resulted in the awnings of the Attorney General's Office, which is carrying out an inquiry against the liberal congressman, who was again elected to the next legislature, and which seeks to determine the ways in which he achieved that title.

For now, the reactions of the congressman who, even, the Ministry of Education pointed out of engaging in irregular practices, are awaited. “There are indications that allow us to conclude that the University of Medellín allegedly granted the law degree to Mr. Julián Bedoya Pulgarín, without meeting the requirements required by the institution's internal regulations,” the portfolio said at the time.

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