Ana Lucía Pineda, wife of President Abelardo de la Espriella, is the legal representative of the Fundación Colombia Luz y Sonrisas, registered on 7 July 2026, a month before her husband took office. The earthquake of 10 August placed her at the head of a donation campaign, and the foundation’s bank account was among the three approved to receive money, publicised by Radio Nacional and Inravisión. The Government, through the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, itemises to the exact peso every payment it makes to households affected by the disaster. No public source consulted says, by contrast, how much the foundation received, and it has taken two tutelas, one from an opposition senator in Bogotá and another from a citizen in Barranquilla, to put that question of elementary arithmetic. Nothing published up to 30 September allows anyone to claim that the money was diverted, and that absence of proof is the most instructive thing about the case.
A July foundation for an August emergency
The founding act does not date from the earthquake. According to Cuestión Pública, which consulted the Single Business Registry (RUES), the meeting at which it was agreed to create the Fundación Colombia Luz y Sonrisas took place on 20 March 2026, and formal registration followed on 7 July, after De la Espriella’s victory in the second round. La Silla Vacía specifies that the registration came two weeks after the election and a month before the president assumed office.
The Fundación Colombia Luz y Sonrisas was set up on 7 July 2026 with capital of 10 million pesos, according to the RUES as cited by Cuestión Pública.
Pineda is not a public official, a detail that Cuestión Pública stresses and that weighs on everything that follows, because the foundation is a private entity and its accounts are not, by nature, public accounts. It would be unfair to ask of that nature more than it can give, since a foundation is not obliged to publish its income as a ministry would, and none of the sources consulted argues otherwise. What is at issue is something else, namely that a private entity was raised to the status of channel for a campaign announced from the summit of the State and broadcast by public media, a circumstance that moves the question from the ground of accounting courtesy to that of accountability towards those who gave.
When the earthquake struck the west of the country, with its epicentre at San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, De la Espriella himself announced during the first week that his wife would lead the donation campaign. The initiative was named Colombia, un solo corazón and opened three channels for donating money, Pineda’s foundation, the Corporación Minuto de Dios and the Association of Food Banks of Colombia (ABACO). Both other organisations have decades of work with vulnerable populations behind them. La Silla Vacía recalls that the foundation has no experience in raising and managing funds, which does not disqualify it but sets it apart.
Two sets of books
The National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) knows how to count. By resolution 0765 of 26 August it regulated an economic support for households whose homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable, of up to 1,050,543 pesos a month for three months, that is, up to 3,151,629 pesos per household according to the agency’s own portal, with lower amounts in municipalities of lower categories. It began paying it with figures that fit in a headline. The first month added up to more than 3,324 million pesos in Chocó, 4,062 million in Buenaventura and 772 million in Roldanillo, according to La República and Portafolio. Any reader can multiply by the number of families and check the order of magnitude of what the State disburses from its own money.
As of 7 September, the UNGRD recorded 331 dead and 4,505 injured in the earthquake of 10 August, according to La República.
That exactness extends to the victims, counted one by one, and does not extend, by contrast, to what was collected. Radio Nacional and Inravisión published the foundation’s account number as a channel for cash donations. Ocampo adds that Señal Colombia did likewise and that the Interior Minister, Rodrigo Lara, urged viewers to donate in a video recorded in Buenaventura, claims that could not be independently confirmed.
Of what was received, volumes in kind circulate. The first lady spoke of more than 1,500 tonnes of food and aid handled by the campaign, and ABACO reported 1,949,000 kilos of products, according to El Heraldo. Money, by contrast, no overall figure. Kilos and tonnes measure logistics, not cash, and mixing the two magnitudes lets the campaign’s balance sheet look complete without being so. La Silla Vacía noted in August that no specific amount existed, and none of the sources consulted, including those from late September, records one.
Of the three approved accounts, only one has the president’s wife as legal representative, and only one has ended up before a judge. This newsroom found no published cash total from Minuto de Dios or ABACO, a finding that does not prove none exists, and so it is not presented here as a fact.
The asymmetry matters because those who give trust the way the appeal is presented. When public radio stations and portals broadcast it, the donor assumes something more than an open account, a certain custody, and it is legitimate to ask what kind.
The question that reached a court
At the end of August, Senator Alejandro Ocampo, of the Pacto Histórico, an opposition party, and second vice-president of the Senate, filed a right of petition, the instrument by which anyone may request information from an authority and which must be answered within fixed deadlines. He wanted to know how much money the foundation had received, what it had been used for and what control or audit mechanisms exist. Almost a month later, according to Ocampo himself as reported by La Silla Vacía, the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre) had not said a word.
Law 1755 of 2015 sets ten days for requests for information and fifteen for other petitions. Its article 32 extends the right to private organisations, foundations included, when a fundamental right is at stake, a reading the Constitutional Court has confirmed, for example in ruling T-487 of 2017. On 22 September the Juzgado 38 de Familia de Bogotá, a family court, admitted the tutela, the fast judicial mechanism by which a citizen asks a judge for the immediate protection of a fundamental right. No source consulted mentions a prior reply or a reasoned extension of the deadline.
The defendants named were the Dapre, the Ministry of Finance, the foundation and Pineda as legal representative. The court gave them 48 consecutive hours to respond. It also warned that, if no report was filed, article 20 of Decree 2591 of 1991 could apply, which allows the facts of the tutela to be taken as true when the respondent stays silent. It covers only the facts the tutela sets out, a failure to reply, not a handling of funds.
In parallel, the Juzgado Octavo de Pequeñas Causas y Competencia Múltiple of Barranquilla admitted another tutela, filed by a citizen, Steven Liévano. It asks for the money received, the expenses incurred, the goods acquired or handed over and the balance of the accounts. The order became known on 23 September and also set a deadline of 48 hours.
Oversight of foundations falls, in general, to the departmental governments and, in Bogotá, to the Mayor’s Office, which receive statutes and annual financial statements, while the Chamber of Commerce merely checks formal requirements. Which of these authorities supervises Colombia Luz y Sonrisas depends on its domicile, a detail the RUES certificate would allow to be confirmed and which the sources consulted do not record. Control exists on paper. What its design suggests, a review of statutes and annual balance sheets, is an administrative and non-public supervision, ill suited to tracking week by week the destination of an emergency collection.
It helps to separate three questions that public debate tends to blur. The first is how much was received, and it is the one both tutelas pose. Next comes what it was spent on, which can be answered only if the first is. Last is who verifies both answers, which the supervision system described leaves most in the dark, because reviewing an annual balance sheet is not the same as checking that every peso collected in an emergency went where it was said it would go. It is foreseeable that the tutelas will compel a formal answer to the first two, not an independent audit of either.
What the Presidency answered and what is not known
On 25 September Ocampo stated, in a press release, that of the four parties named only the Dapre had filed a response, and that it did not resolve the central question. According to the senator, part of the filing questioned the impartiality of the judge who admitted the tutela on the basis of posts on her personal account on the social network X. “If they have nothing to hide, the logical thing would be to answer with figures,” he said.
That description of the reply comes solely from Ocampo, who is an interested party and an opposition senator. The Dapre’s text does not appear in any of the sources consulted, and no public reaction from the Presidency, the foundation or Pineda on the amount was found. Ocampo announced that he will ask the court to take the facts as true with respect to the parties that did not respond and to order the Presidency to answer on the substance. The law gives the judge ten working days to rule, according to Prensa Latina, so the decision could become known in the first days of October.
Three outcomes open up, in broad terms. The judge may order an answer on the substance, and the figure will then be known in the form the court sets. The judge may declare the tutela inadmissible, for example on finding that other means of defence exist or that the Dapre has already answered, and the question will then return to the ordinary route. Or the judge may take the facts as true in the face of the silence of one of the parties, which, as said, would establish the failure to respond and nothing more. It may also happen that the Dapre claims not to hold what is asked of it, since the account belongs to a private third party, an argument that would leave the burden of answering on the foundation and on Pineda. None of these paths amounts to an audit, which is why a ruling in Ocampo’s favour would not close the matter.
Nothing published allows anyone to claim that the foundation or its representative diverted funds, and Cuestión Pública’s investigation makes no such accusation. The tutelas seek information, not a penalty, and reading them as an accusation would be as inaccurate as reading silence as proof.
A question of accounting remains that no public document consulted has settled since it was raised. A State able to report to the peso what it pays to homeless households put its public means at the service of a private third party’s account, without it being established that it afterwards reported on what was collected, and it took a court to put the question. What this asymmetry suggests is a habit, that of entrusting public generosity to channels whose control is exercised after the fact, in private and at an administrative pace that urgency does not share. If the answer comes, we shall finally know how much was received, and transparency will have arrived late even if it arrives complete. If it does not…
G.S.
Sources
- Cuestión Pública, Ayudas que recoge la primera dama van a parar a su propia fundación
- La Silla Vacía, Donaciones que recoge la primera dama van a su propia fundación
- La Silla Vacía, Al vice del Senado le tocó entutelar para que Presidencia le dé información
- El Universal, Primera dama deberá informar sobre donaciones recaudadas para víctimas del terremoto
- Vanguardia, Fundación de la primera dama deberá responder ante dos juzgados por donaciones
- Prensa Latina, Admiten recurso legal para conocer uso de fondos tras sismo
- El Nuevo Siglo, Ocampo señala omisiones de la Presidencia sobre donaciones tras terremoto
- Inravisión, convocatoria a la solidaridad nacional tras el terremoto
- Radio Nacional, Inravisión convoca a la solidaridad nacional tras el terremoto
- El Heraldo, La primera dama sigue gestionando ayudas a través de Colombia un solo corazón
- La República, Número de fallecidos por el terremoto se mantiene en 331
- La República, Ungrd inició pago para familias damnificadas por sismo en Chocó
- Portafolio, UNGRD destinó 4.062 millones a Buenaventura y 772 millones a Roldanillo
- UNGRD, activa apoyo económico temporal para familias damnificadas por el terremoto
- Secretaría del Senado, Ley 1755 de 2015
- Corte Constitucional, sentencia T-487 de 2017
- Unidad Solidaria, Fundaciones
- Gobernación de Cundinamarca, Información importante entidades sin ánimo de lucro
