Peculado desde la acción penal y la acción fiscal: estudio de caso Andrés Felipe Arias Leiva

Abstract

In legal terms, peculado consists in pointing out to the public servant, or certain individuals by the scope of their role directly related to a public interest purpose, as an active subject whose proceeding as administrator of the treasury, is changing the aims of the state. The Colombian legislator, in exercise of his political freedom, forms three sanctioning means for the purpose of protecting the state's property, these are the imposition of the custodial sentence together with the obligation to pay the fine and the inability to exercise of rights, from the criminal action; the imposition of the obligation to pay a liquid sum of money, from the fiscal action; and, the dismissal and general inability, from disciplinary action. With this, the legislator in Colombia leaves in disuse the significant progress that the principles postulated by Beccaria represent, especially that which raises the need to achieve a rigorous proportionality between crimes and penalties. The case study deals with two of the three sanctions imposed on the former minister of agriculture, Andrés Felipe Arias Leiva, demonstrating many similarities between the criminal action and the fiscal action with the course of achieving to demonstrate the disproportion between the behavior of peculado and the penalty imposed.