On 12th July, Colombia Reports reported that the US has extradited Colombia’s former agriculture minister Andres Felipe Arias, after a 5-year attempt to evade a 17-year corruption sentence and multiple failed attempts to request political asylum or block his extradition on claims his corruption conviction was part of a political conspiracy. He served between 2005 and 2009, when he resigned in the hope he could succeed President Uribe after the 2010 elections. He fled Colombia in 2014, days before the Supreme Court sentenced him to prison for embezzling $25 million from the AIS fund – meant to boost small farmers’ competitiveness to prepare them for a pending free trade agreement with the US, but used to bribe those that could sponsor his 2010 election bid.
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