Medellín Mayor Accuses Quintero Brothers of Running $1 Trillion COP Corruption Network » Finance Colombia

Fiscalía charges reach 55 people as a Miami money trail emerges

Federico Gutiérrez, the mayor of Medellín, used a July 27, 2026, press conference to lay out what he described as a coordinated criminal structure operating inside the administration of his predecessor, former mayor Daniel Quintero Calle, and Quintero’s brother, Miguel Quintero Calle. Gutiérrez told reporters the network reached into nearly every district agency and directed more than $1 trillion COP in public contracting, based on findings the Alcaldía de Medellín (Medellín Mayor’s Office) has compiled since he took office in January 2024.

Prosecutors classify the alleged network as a grupo de delincuencia organizada, or GDO (organized crime group) — a designation Colombian law uses for entrenched, racketeering-style criminal structures. Gutiérrez has given it a public nickname, “Hermanitos Q” (Little Q Brothers), and said the case file, which stood at 501 findings in an earlier accounting, now includes 666 findings after his administration added 165 new files. He said the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) has formally charged 55 people, a number he expects to reach 59, and that the combined prison exposure of the group’s members, based on current charges, exceeds 750 years, according to Infobae Colombia.

Gutiérrez said the network coordinated in part through a WhatsApp group its members called “Los Amiguitos” (The Little Friends), which he said the implicated parties created themselves in 2020 and which prosecutors are using as evidence. He also displayed images he said documented purchases tied to the alleged scheme: an armored Toyota pickup truck Miguel Quintero acquired about two months into the administration, valued at $260 million COP, a swimming pool built at Miguel Quintero’s farm in Copacabana, Antioquia, valued at $160 million COP, and firearms, according to Infobae Colombia. “This wasn’t a government with corruption cases,” Gutiérrez told reporters. “It was corruption governing from different desks. As they say, not even Ali Baba dared so much.”

Quintero governed Medellín from 2020 to 2023. He now serves as Colombia’s national Superintendent of Health, appointed by President Gustavo Petro by decree in April 2026 despite the pending charges, according to El Espectador. The appointment drew public opposition from health-sector groups, including Change.org petitions that together gathered more than 17,000 signatures asking Petro to reconsider, according to Infobae Colombia. Quintero rejected Gutiérrez’s allegations the same day, calling the mayor “ridiculous” in a post on X: “The only government plan Mayor Federico Gutiérrez had was trying to screw me over because I denounced what happened at Hidroituango, where $10 trillion COP is still missing that people are paying for through their utility bills,” he wrote, according to Infobae Colombia. Hidroituango, EPM’s long-delayed and cost-overrun hydroelectric project, predates Quintero’s administration.

The Área Metropolitana and Itagüí’s fire department

The most legally advanced case centers on six contracts signed between 2020 and 2023 between the Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá (Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley, AMVA) and the volunteer fire department of Itagüí, a Medellín-area municipality, worth $17,645 million COP, according to Infobae Colombia. Prosecutors allege the money, meant to fund emergency and pandemic response, was instead diverted through inflated invoices. Juan Alberto Cardona Henao, the fire department’s former accountant, has already been convicted and sentenced to 19 months in prison; he is cooperating with prosecutors under a plea agreement. Miguel Quintero, his business associate Sebastián Ortega, former AMVA official Álvaro Villada and Vanesa Álvarez Restrepo face a hearing where prosecutors intend to formally charge them with embezzlement and undue interest in contracting — exposure of up to 22 years and six months. That hearing has been postponed three times: originally set for August 3, pushed to August 25 and then to August 31 at the request of Villada’s defense, and voided a third time on August 31 itself, after the presiding judge agreed with Quintero Calle’s defense that the case had been improperly transferred to her courtroom following the original judge’s medical leave. It is now scheduled for September 10, according to Infobae Colombia.

Afinia and EPM’s Caribbean coast utility

Gutiérrez also renewed a long-running allegation, first raised by his administration in 2024, that the general manager’s post at Afinia — a Caribbean-coast electricity distributor in which EPM (Medellín’s public utility) holds a stake — was effectively sold during Quintero’s term for between $5 million and $8 million USD, in a deal allegedly brokered at a restaurant in Medellín and finalized in meetings in Cartagena and Barranquilla. Gutiérrez said the buyers installed Javier Lastra Fuscaldo as general manager in August 2021 with the help of Emilio Tapia, a contractor already convicted in Bogotá’s unrelated “carrusel de la contratación” (contracting carousel) case. Lastra has denied the allegations since they first surfaced. “Nobody made conditions on my appointment at Afinia, and my management was carried out based on good practices,” he told El Colombiano in 2024, adding that he had not been formally notified of any complaint against him. Gutiérrez said Afinia has lost $1.5 trillion COP a year since; separately, EPM’s own board told El Colombiano in 2024 that Afinia was losing $80 billion to $90 billion COP a month and needed at least $1.5 trillion COP in fresh investment that year.

Metroparques, the Aguas water park, and Inder

Prosecutors have filed a formal accusation against four people over maintenance contracts for the Parque de las Aguas water park, administered through Metroparques, worth close to $22 billion COP: Álvaro Villada, Jorge Enrique Liévano (Metroparques’ former general manager), Viviana del Valle Velázquez (the entity’s former purchasing chief) and contractor Juan Alexander Pino Jaramillo, who together face up to 33 years in prison, while three additional contractors face up to 16 years. Prosecutors allege contracting companies tied to Pino — Comercializadora J. Pino SAS, Soluciones SAS and Estructuras Zafiro SAS — received more than $4.5 billion COP, and that cost overruns on chlorine, floodlights and biosafety supplies alone caused more than $2.79 billion COP in damage. Authorities have already applied asset forfeiture to a car and a motorcycle tied to the case.

A separate, related matter involves a 2020 contract awarded to Sian Eventos y Logística SAS, led by Mauricio Jaramillo Botero, to supply sports equipment for youth recreation programs run by Inder (Medellín’s sports and recreation institute) through Metroparques. Gutiérrez said the contract ran up $3,705 million COP in cost overruns on balls, medals, uniforms and trophies, stretched from a planned two-and-a-half months to 26 months, and that roughly $200 billion COP in Inder funding was separately redirected to Metroparques through similar inter-agency contracts. Jaramillo faces up to 16 years in prison; Diana Paola Toro (Inder’s director), Liévano and María Eugenia Domínguez (another former Metroparques general manager) face up to 33 years.

Buen Comienzo, the early-childhood program

Gutiérrez said prosecutors have charged three people over an early-childhood nutrition and education contract awarded in October 2020 to Corporación Colombia Avanza, after Quintero appointed Vivian Cecilia Puerta Guerra to run the Buen Comienzo program. According to the accusation Gutiérrez cited, the contract exceeded the corporation’s demonstrated operating capacity by 2,816%, producing patrimonial damage of roughly $1,423 million COP — money Gutiérrez said could have fed more than 3,300 additional children for a month. Colombia’s Procuraduría General de la Nación (Inspector General’s Office) has already barred former education secretary Marta Alexandra Agudelo from holding public office for eight years; she and Henry Paulison Gómez Montoya, Colombia Avanza’s general manager, face up to 33 years and 16 years respectively in the criminal case. Gutiérrez said four children ages 0 to 5 died of acute malnutrition in Medellín in 2023, the last full year of Quintero’s term, and that no similar deaths have occurred since.

The Jardín Botánico and a witness’s murder

A 2020 contract to maintain the city’s parks and green spaces, previously handled by the nonprofit Jardín Botánico de Medellín, was instead awarded through a private process to Reforestadora El Líbano SAS for $5,250 million COP, according to Gutiérrez. The Procuraduría has already disqualified former infrastructure secretary Natalia Urrego Arias and Liévano from public office for nine years over the contract; Luz Eliana Henao Rodríguez, El Líbano’s legal representative, faces up to nine years in the separate criminal case. Gutiérrez also renewed a request to the Fiscalía and national police for protective measures for witnesses in the broader investigation, citing the March 14, 2024, killing of Asdrúbal Vélez Orozco, a businessman linked to El Líbano and the husband of Henao. Gutiérrez said other witnesses and their families are currently being threatened and pressured.

Aguas Vivas and the international money trail

The Aguas Vivas case, the one that directly names Quintero, is separate from the broader “Hermanitos Q” file but factors into Gutiérrez’s overall tally: 13 people, including Quintero, face embezzlement and abuse-of-authority allegations tied to $42 billion COP in alleged patrimonial damage and more than 4,000 pieces of evidence. Gutiérrez has also pointed to an alleged international money trail: a Medellín businessman’s Miami-based gold-trading company reported revenue of roughly $112 billion COP over the last three years of Quintero’s administration, then reported no income after Gutiérrez took office in 2024, according to Telemedellín.

US Ambassador to Colombia Hugo Guevara visited Gutiérrez’s office in Medellín on August 21 for talks focused on combating child sexual exploitation, during which Gutiérrez also raised the corruption findings, according to Telemedellín. Gutiérrez then traveled to the United States, meeting Homeland Security Investigations personnel in Phoenix on the same child-exploitation cooperation before flying to Miami, where he met for more than two hours on August 31 with the FBI‘s International Anti-Corruption Unit. He handed over a file the mayor’s office says contains roughly 13,000 pieces of documentary evidence, four plea-agreement cooperators and imputation proceedings against 55 former officials, according to El Espectador. Quintero dismissed the trip on X, telling Gutiérrez to “stop being a clown” and adding that if he had “a single ill-gotten peso” in the US, “the United States wouldn’t need your theatrics to find it,” according to Infobae Colombia.

Gutiérrez said several other officials facing charges in the broader case have gone on to hold national-government posts under Petro, including Fabio Andrés García (Medellín’s former secretary general, now in a leadership role at the Superintendencia Nacional de Salud), Sergio Andrés López (Medellín’s former planning director, now an advisor at the Ministerio de Salud (Health Ministry)), Natalia Andrea Jiménez (a former subsecretary of contracting execution, now a contractor at the Cancillería (Foreign Ministry)), César Augusto Chavarría (Metroparques’ former logistics chief, now at the DIAN tax authority) and Rubén Darío López (the infrastructure secretariat’s former technical director, now a contractor at Aerocivil, Colombia’s civil aviation authority).

Where the cases stand

Two threads of the investigation are moving on parallel, and separately contested, tracks. In the Aguas Vivas case, Judge 22 of the Medellín Criminal Circuit Court nullified the formal charges against Quintero and 12 co-defendants on July 14, 2026, ruling that prosecutors had not specified clearly enough how each defendant participated in the alleged scheme. The Fiscalía and the Alcaldía de Medellín, recognized in the case as a victim, are asking that same judge to reverse herself before the matter can move to the Tribunal Superior de Medellín (Medellín Superior Court) for a final ruling. Hearings on August 6 and August 20 each ran long before prosecutors and the city’s legal representative — who cited more than 4,000 pieces of evidence and 50 witness statements — could finish arguing that the nullity was wrongly decided; the defense is now set to respond at a hearing scheduled for September 14, 2026, after which the judge will rule, according to El Colombiano and Telemedellín. The nullity is a procedural setback for prosecutors, not an acquittal or a dismissal, and the case remains open.

In the AMVA-Itagüí firefighters case, Gutiérrez said the repeated delays have gone beyond ordinary scheduling friction. After the August 25 postponement, he called it “indignante” (outrageous) and asked prosecutors to seek the defendants’ arrest rather than wait out further delays, according to Infobae Colombia. After the August 31 hearing was voided over the reassignment dispute, Gutiérrez wrote on X: “There have been three postponements. They have dragged this process out so much that we have gone to the courts to investigate what is happening — this is no longer normal.” He added that his administration, recognized as a victim in the case, would join prosecutors in asking the court to order pretrial detention for the defendants when the hearing resumes on September 10, according to Infobae Colombia.