The explosive letter demanding to stop the millionaire solar panel contract from the package that President Petro ordered to acquire at the last minute

24 hours ago, the Attorney General’s Office received a communication from Brayan Giraldo Ruiz, director of the Non-Conventional Energy and Efficient Energy Management Fund (Fenoge) – an entity under the Ministry of Mines, headed by Edwin Palma -, in which he rejects the request to suspend a million-dollar process underway in that entity.

For a week now, the First Deputy Attorney General for the Oversight of Public Function, headed by Marcio Melgosa, has warned about irregularities in that tender, for 165.492 billion pesos, which seeks to implement photovoltaic solar systems (solar panels) in different areas of the country within the ‘Colombia Solar’ project, supposedly key to averting a blackout.

And now, EL TIEMPO exclusively obtained an explosive letter from the legal deputy director of that entity where fundamental irregularities are exposed and an immediate halt to the process is requested.

The document is signed by Camilo Iván Rincón León, in his capacity as legal deputy director/contractor.

After stating that he was denied access to several documents after he alerted about anomalies, Rincón requests to suspend or cancel the process and says there is metadata support and a forensic report that back his request. Additionally, he asks for the immediate publication of what the Attorney General’s Office ordered on the SECOP II transactional platform and that the evaluation team refrain from delivering and publishing the preliminary evaluation report of the process.

And he directly points to the head of the entity: “On July 8, 2026, the executive director of Fenoge unilaterally signed addendum No. 3 of process IA-006-2026 where the subjective condition to qualify, weigh, or value the credit quota was substantially modified, contrary to the opinions of Fenoge’s deputy directorates, without the approval of the structuring team and the technical, financial, and legal deputy directorates.”

Rincón León agrees with the Attorney General’s Office on the issue of Addendum No. 3, which could compromise the legality of the process and even lead to its nullification.

According to the oversight body, the document would have been issued outside the allowed deadline and the process schedule, modified by addendum No. 2, established that the maximum deadline to issue new addenda expired on July 8, 2026, at 2:59 p.m.

A forensic analysis carried out by the National Directorate of Special Investigations (DNIE) of the Attorney General’s Office concluded that the PDF file of addendum No. 3 was created on July 8 at 7:52 p.m., that is, almost five hours after the deadline expired.

Additionally, the oversight body points out that the document’s date does not match its metadata. Specifically, they say that addendum number 3 is dated July 6, 2026, but the metadata indicates that the document was actually created on July 8, 2026, hours after the authorized deadline to modify the process rules.

At this point, according to the oversight body, this difference affects the reliability of the document and could make it appear that the modification was issued timely when, technically, it was not.

Furthermore, it could constitute possible ideological falsification of the document, a breach of administrative principles and could compromise the principles of legality, economy, administrative morality, and even the transparency of the process.

Therefore, they requested Fenoge to immediately suspend the process and study the possibility of canceling it due to possible violation of mandatory rules.

In fact, it is not ruled out that the facts could compromise the disciplinary responsibility of the officials involved in issuing addendum number 3.

EL TIEMPO had access to the response Fenoge gave to the Attorney General’s Office, which appears uploaded to Secop, where the entity rejects the oversight body’s conclusions and maintains that there are no legal grounds to suspend or cancel the process.

“The modifications introduced through Addendum No. 3 did not alter the object, the selection modality, the qualifying requirements, the evaluation factors, nor the other essential elements of Open Invitation No. 006 of 2026. On the contrary, they aimed to clarify the process rules included in the TCC, extend the deadline for issuing addenda until July 10, 2026, and set the maximum date for submitting offers as July 15, 2026, at 09:00 hours”, reads Fenoge’s response.

They also recalled that the Fund’s contracting is governed by private law and by its own Contracting Manual, which allows modifying the invitation through addenda; extending deadlines when there is a technical, legal, financial, or risk-related justification; even modifying the schedule after the process closure.

And they specified that the purpose of addendum No. 3 was to correct those observed aspects that would allow objective selection and guarantee the necessary time for the preparation and submission of offers by those interested in participating in the selection process.

Regarding the difference in the addendum’s metadata, they stated it was an editing error.

“There is no action, instruction, or documentary element that allows inferring an intention to irregularly alter the process chronology or restrict the participation of interested parties. The identified inconsistency corresponds to a material editing error, which did not affect the purpose of publicity, transparency, equality, and broad participation that guided the actions carried out within the process,” Fenoge assured.

(Consult all the articles from EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit here)

Also, that the metadata does not undermine the legality of the administrative act: “Computer or layout inconsistencies in digital records do not by themselves undermine or annul the substance of the administrative act, except for full judicial proof of fraud or deliberate distortion.”

Therefore, they concluded that there was no material breach of the principles of transparency, equality, or objective selection.

In fact, they say that suspending the process would harm the public interest and delay a strategic public policy of energy transition because the aim is to strengthen the country’s energy security and face phenomena like El Niño.

However, they did not count on the legal deputy director’s letter.

INVESTIGATIVE UNIT

u.investigativa@eltiempo.com

@UinvestigativaET

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