FILE PHOTO: Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks at the opening of the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Summit in Cali, Colombia October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez/File photo
BOGOTA (Reuters) -Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday that finance vice minister Diego Guevara will step into that ministry's top job, after previous minister Ricardo Bonilla resigned amid an ongoing corruption scandal.
Petro had said earlier on Wednesday he was expecting Bonilla's resignation, but that he does not think the former minister has committed any wrongdoing.
The growing scandal, which is being investigated by the attorney general's office and other entities, revolves around the alleged misdirection of resources from the national disaster management agency (UNGRD) and has been tied to various officials, including a former interior minister.
"It will be Dr. Guevara, the current vice minister, a university professor, who knows the whole effort we have been fighting," Petro told journalists after a meeting in Montevideo with outgoing Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, when asked about Bonilla's replacement.
Bonilla said in his resignation letter that he needed to "assume my defense as a citizen with my legal team, devoid of my public position, to concentrate on the process and avoid whatever damage from affecting the government's public agenda."
Bonilla added he was highly confident he would convince investigators of his innocence.
The scandal ignited earlier this year when two former UNGRD officials were accused of ties to suspicious purchases of water tankers for 46.8 billion pesos ($10.5 million), which were supposedly bought to supply remote areas of Colombia's La Guajira province with water.
The Supreme Court called on former Interior Minister Luis Fernando Velasco to testify in the probe, saying its investigation "begins with the hypothesis of the crimes of bribery and possible illicit enrichment."
UNGRD former deputy director Sneyder Pinilla, one of the two officials investigated, said former presidents of the senate and chamber of representatives, Ivan Name and Andres Calle, received huge sums of money to help push the president's social and economic reforms through Congress.
Both Name and Calle denied the accusations.
"I expect his resignation, not because I believe him guilty, but because they want to tear him apart for being loyal to the government's program and they want to unconstitutionally take down the government," Petro said earlier in a long posting on X.
Petro has repeatedly accused his political enemies of seeking to illegally remove him from office.
Bonilla is the second finance minister to leave Petro's government, which took power in August 2022.
(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra, Oliver Griffin and Carlos Vargas; Writing by Oliver Griffin and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Diane Craft and Stephen Coates)
