Colombia’s former foreign minister lobbied Donald Trump to join a coup against Petro
Alvaro Leyva flees for Spain after his plot leaked to media
Colombia’s former foreign minister, Alvaro Leyva, has been leading a one-man crusade to topple the president he once worked for, Gustavo Petro. As part of their efforts, he met with close advisors of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump— seeking their help to remove him from office.
According to audio obtained by Colombian media companies and sources close to Republican congressmen, Leyva tried to approach the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, seeking to create “international pressure” that would culminate in the removal of Petro. The White House, according to these same sources, never considered the proposal.
The plan pitched by Leyva would have installed Vice President Francia Márqueza as president.
Leyva, a conservative politician, was one of Petro's most trusted allies when Petro took office in 2022 and has worked in negotiations with armed groups as part of ongoing peace processes for decades. He was removed from office last year.
In meetings with Republican allies, Leyva said that the president was an erratic man with serious drug addiction problems and that he had evidence that disqualified him from the presidency. He spoke of an agreement in which “armed and unarmed actors” should be involved, one unnamed Republican source told Colombian media.
In a leaked audio in which Leyva speaks to someone unidentified, he is heard saying: "We have to get that guy out. That guy presiding over the [the presidential elections to be held in 2026]...it's just that, besides, public order is overflowing. That can only happen with a great national agreement, where the ELN and the Gulf Clan have to be present (...) I have spoken with the most important unions (...). The fact is that the Gulf Clan has come here, it is a very fucked up thing. This country is going off the cliff".
He appears to have been trying to incorporate non-state armed actors into removing the president from office.
The former foreign minister and his son, Jorge Leyva, have good contacts with Republican Party leaders in the United States. That is how they asked their friends to arrange a meeting with Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, representative for Florida. "I was in the United States with a top-notch guy: Mario Diaz-Balart. The Diaz-Balarts are the ones behind the Secretary of State," Leyva explains in the recordings. They also intended to meet with another Republican congressman in Miami, Carlos Antonio Giménez.
At the same time, Leyva had begun to publish open letters on social media in which he claimed that Petro was a drug addict. The letters claimed that the president was inexplicably absent or behaved strangely with other foreign leaders. Leyva also claimed that Laura Sarabia, the president's right-hand woman, supplied him with drugs and concealed his habit.
Both Petro and Sarabia deny the accusations, claiming that they are mere inventions by an embittered former ally. In one of the leaked audios, Leyva says that the allegations were merely the first step in a long plan to topple Colombia’s president.
In other audios, he discusses plans to involve right-wing personality Vicky Dávila, the former director of Semana magazine who left journalism to enter politics and aspires to win the 2026 elections He also mentions Miguel Uribe, the pre-candidate of the Centro Democratico party, who remains hospitalized after a gunman shot him twice in the head at the beginning of June.
The recordings, published by EL PAÍS newspaper, had been in the hands of the Colombian secret service before being leaked, and Petro has heard them. He accused Leyva of trying to perpetrate a coup d'état against him. The former foreign minister fled the country for Madrid shortly afterward.
Leyva also involved Francia Márquez in the plot, trading messages with Márquez about installing her in office.
After listening to the recordings, Petro asked Francia Márquez for an explanation. Francia denied involvement. Petro demanded that she publicly deny her participation. She refused, and since then, the relationship between them, which was already strained, has become nonexistent, according to sources within the administration.
Leyva and Petro’s partnership goes back years. When he assumed the presidency in 2022, he entrusted Leyva with some of the most important issues of his government, such as the simultaneous negotiations with the different armed groups, known as total peace.
Leyva was removed from office on a technicality involving passport issues and felt he was being removed for carrying out Petro’s orders. He hoped that he would be rewarded for it and play a new role in the government, even if it was an external one. At the time, Petro was pushing negotiations for structural reforms that would have affected Colombian ministries. Leyva wanted to be the face of this proposal and began campaigning on his own. However, that idea did not fare well and was eventually abandoned. Petro stopped answering calls and messages to Leyva, who felt betrayed. Shortly afterward, Leyva published the letters, the first step towards a plan to remove Colombia’s president that he hoped would be brought to completion by Donald Trump.
Instead, he has fled the country in disgrace.
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Hasta pronto, piratas!