For a little over 8 hours last Sunday, August 6, a virtual hearing was held in which the unarchiving of a multimillion-dollar case against Ricardo Roa and Ecopetrol was being requested.
The case is related to the alleged responsibility of Ecopetrol and two of its subsidiaries (Cenit and Ocensa) for supposedly restricting competition in the multimillion-dollar helicopter contracting for at least 12 years.
The setback
The plaintiff is the company Helicol, which in October 2025 reported to the Prosecutor’s Office actions related to what it considers an alleged favoritism towards its competitor Helistar in bidding processes for helicopter transport in Ecopetrol and its subsidiaries.
In its complaint, it argued that its competitor had been favored for several years through contractual processes that, according to the company, presented irregularities.
And although on August 3 Helicol and the Procuraduría requested to review and unarchive the investigation, a judge in Bogotá has just made a substantive decision.
Indeed, 24 hours ago, the 65th municipal criminal court with guarantee control function in Bogotá denied the unarchiving.
The arguments
The Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO had access to the minutes of the hearing in which the unarchiving against Roa and 7 others was denied, for conspiracy to commit a crime, undue interest in contract awarding, and restrictive agreements on competition.
Helicol’s attorney, Julián Quintana, argued that new material evidence had emerged and that the archiving had been used as a premature acquittal.
Regarding this, the Prosecutor’s Office, which requested to maintain the archiving decision, stated that a thorough investigation was indeed carried out and that this was demonstrated in the submitted material evidence and that there were factual circumstances that allowed proving that it was not a crime.
“The victims’ attorney never properly submitted new evidence to the Prosecutor’s Office. Regarding the press documents, it is unknown how they were collected, no chain of custody is observed, nor whether they were edited or not, so the prosecuting entity is not obliged to consider that type of evidence,” reads the Prosecutor’s Office’s statement regarding the unarchiving request.
Additionally, the Prosecutor’s Office pointed out that in the material evidence it was observed that in the contracts of the Helicol case, referred to by the hearing requester, there was indeed a plurality of bidders and effective competition.
For the court, the original archiving order was the result of a “serious and thorough activity” by the prosecuting entity, finding that there was atypicality in the investigated conduct and the decision to close the case was legally supported.
The judicial office stated that the legal issue did not lie in a value judgment about the Prosecutor’s Office’s work, but in the absence of substantial evidence.
“The court is not functionally superior to the Prosecutor’s Office nor does it exercise control over it,” warned the judge, emphasizing that the competence to decide which crimes are investigated is exclusive to the prosecuting entity.
At the hearing, it was stated that the request was mostly based on press headlines, which, under the rigor of criminal procedural law, lack probative validity by themselves to reopen a case and that since there were no New Material Evidence or real physical evidence, the request was deemed inadmissible.
Juan David León, attorney for Ricardo Roa, said in his intervention that the victims’ attorney did not provide any essential or novel element but rather provided means of knowledge that he wanted to be re-evaluated under a supposedly criminal understanding of an openly atypical fact.
(Consult all articles from the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO here)
In any case, Ricardo Roa remains linked to two other cases: one for influence peddling that originated from an investigation by the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO regarding the shady purchase of his luxurious apartment 901; and another for violation of electoral limits related to the accounts of the Petro 2022-2026 campaign of which he was the manager.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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