The San Silvestre Green Corporation filed a criminal complaint against the former director of the Corporación Autónoma de Santander (Autonomous Corporation of Santander -CAS in Spanish-). Juan Gabriel Álvarez, former director of CAS, will be liable for damage to natural resources by omission. This is done after the Constitutional Court of Colombia, by means of Ruling T-227 of 2017, ordered the CAS to carry out a study about the environmental and social impacts generated by the Rediba S.A. company. Juan Gabriel Álvarez, director at the time, should have complied with the Court’s order, but he decided to ignore it instead.
The community rejects the behavior of the former director of the CAS and demands justice!
The former director’s failure to comply with this order is an act that the community condemns and doesn’t understand, as he should have revoked the environmental license granted to Rediba S.A., but chose not to. He even knew that the Attorney General’s Office had charged this company with five environmental crimes. Consequently, the former officer’s omission caused a serious damage on the San Silvestre Regional Integrated Management District (Distrito Regional de Manejo Integrado -DRMI in Spanish-) protected area.
Juan Gabriel Álvarez, former director of the CAS, ignored Ruling T-227 of 2017.
It is worth noting that Ruling T-227 of 2017 seeks to apply the environmental precautionary principle and the avoidance causal.
This way, Mr. Alvarez’s decision to ignore the Court’s ruling resulted in charges imposed by the Attorney General’s Office through a guarantee control judge, for the crime of damage to natural resources by omission. At the moment, this crime is in its pre-trial phase and the San Silvestre Green Corporation is acting as representative of the victims.
The San Silvestre Green Corporation has been working on relevant environmental complaints. This is why we invite the community to get involved in our actions. If you hear about any action that harms the environment, you can contact us through our service lines.
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