More than 1,800 complaints against persons and officials accused of various crimes in process of comprehensive attention and reparation of those affected by armed conflict, filed with the authorities the Victims Unit, during the last four years.
This was confirmed Claudia Aristizabal, head of the Group of Protection against Fraud of the Victims Unit, after highlighting that the most detected criminal behavior in the processes of her entity have to do with impersonation, false testimony, fraud and fraud of subsidy.
After remembering that in the “Eye with fraud” campaign, do not believe everything, “we work hand in hand with the Attorney General and the National Police, Aristizabal said that” the first type of deception that has been detected is the impersonation of true victims by unscrupulous people who are posing as them and claim the aid or administrative compensation”.
The official commented that a second registered criminal behavior has to do with false testimony and procedural fraud. “It is related to people who pose as victims when they are not, then they are deceiving the State with the false testimony and the authorities, because they are not real victims of conflict and we already have people convicted of these two crimes”, he said.
Aristizabal said that equal fraud is recorded as a subsidy, which is a crime that appears within the Victims Law (1448). “We have also had several people condemned and that is when the humanitarian aid or money that the Unit delivers has a different destination to housing, accommodation or food”, he added.
“The other crime is that of the scam. When a group of people, prosecutors or public officials make real concerts to commit a crime, swindling the real victims, charging very high percentages supposedly to achieve their humanitarian aid or compensation more quickly”, he said.
The recommendations
According to Claudia Aristizabal, head of the Anti-Fraud Unit of the Victims Unit, people of the general population should not pass themselves off as real victims when they are not, because at present there are citizens convicted of that crime.
“We continue to work daily with the Prosecutor’s Office, with the Judicial Police, we are protecting the real victims of armed conflict and we are helping to discover the people who are deceiving our victims or who are posing as false victims”, she reaffirmed.
The official said there were arrests in Medellín, on the Atlantic Coast, in the Valle del Cauca, where unscrupulous people joined to deceive the victims but they are already detained and prosecuted.
“The message for the victims is that they do not give money. Our real victims do not need to go to anyone to do the procedures before the Unit or before any state entity that gives them all the attention and repair programs”, she said.
