A Colombian high court unseated the country’s chief prosecutor on Tuesday on the grounds that she was improperly elected. Her marriage to a former member of Congress tied to drug lords had cast a shadow over her tenure.
Prosector Viviane Morales, who held the second-most powerful post in Colombia after the president, had been elected by the Supreme Court in December 2010 from a list of candidates proposed by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
However, a different court, the Council of State, ruled 15-9 on Tuesday that Morales did not get the required number of votes.
There was no immediate comment from Santos or Morales on the decision. She will be replaced by her deputy while a new chief prosecutor is chosen.
Morales has been under intense scrutiny since her marriage late last year to Carlos Alonso Lucio.
An M-19 rebel in his youth, Lucio has in recent years served as an adviser to far-right paramilitaries and had contacts with extradited drug lords. In 1996, he was stripped of his US visa over his relation with Cali cartel leaders.
However, Morales has also upset Colombia’s right.
She has led the prosecution of a number of former close associates of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe on corruption and criminal conspiracy charges.
Morales has not commented publicly about her relationship with Lucio other than to confirm her marriage to him. They had originally married in 2000, but later separated.
Lucio is not known to currently be facing any criminal investigations, though he has acknowledged meeting with drug-trafficking paramilitary warlords to help them negotiate an eventual peace pact with Uribe’s 2002-2010 government.
Lucio had in the 1990s been at the center of another controversy as an ardent defender of then-Colombian president Ernesto Samper during an unsuccessful impeachment attempt over the acceptance by Samper’s campaign of US$6 million in contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel.
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