Five years later there is one convicted and 3 on trial for false 'Andrés Bello' scholarships at Universidad de Caldas

After five years and four months, progress has finally been made in research on the case of people who won places and studied at the University of Caldas thanks to false Andrés Bello scholarships.

According to information provided by the Prosecutor's Office to the newspaper La Patria, one person is convicted and the trials of the other three accused of the events are at the trial stage, without specifying whether these four persons are students, intermediaries or officials of the University of Caldas.

The complaints filed by the university are for the crime of obtaining a false public document, in this case for the purpose of entering the higher education center, investigation, which according to the Prosecutor's Office “continues to advance, through the collection and analysis of material evidence, against other alleged perpetrators of the conduct”.

Likewise, the Prosecutor's Office, in responding to a right of petition filed by the newspaper, invoked several laws to omit details of the process, arguing that “documentation and information held by public entities are protected by a legal reserve”.

However, the case dates back to December 2016, when an investigation by La Patria revealed that the University of Caldas admitted students who illegally presented Andrés Bello scholarships, which are awarded by the national government to the best high school graduates, thus allowing the beneficiaries to enter, directly, any university.

The investigation proved suspicions of the unusual increase in admissions for this scholarship, which, for example, in the Medical program went from receiving one person with the distinction for the second half of 2013, to 24 people by the first half of 2017.

At the beginning of 2017, the university, in response to the investigation, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office and revoked 44 quotas, mainly in Medicine, of which 27 were people who were already admitted and 17 who had been studying for several semesters.

In 2018, the then director of Prosecutors of Caldas, Clara Irene Giraldo, determined, in June of that year, that those behind this scam operated with the help of intermediaries, who in turn attracted those students who needed to enter the U.

In 2020, the same Prosecutor's Office announced that four women were charged with obtaining a false public document in the process related to Andrés Bello and that there are 27 people linked to the investigation, according to the evidence collected by the investigating body, without any of them accepting responsibility in the hearings. which took place in September of that year.

According to the process, graduates from different schools in the country entered the registration platform of the University of Caldas false documents related to the award of the Andrés Bello award, in order to qualify for courses and thus not pay tuition and other costs.

For this reason, copies were also issued to the Caldas Prosecutor's Office for Children and Adolescents, because among the alleged persons involved were nine children under 18 years of age, at the time of the incident.

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