Virginia Vallejo-Garcia  
 
                      
            
                 Copyright Hernan Diaz 1980                                                                                                                                                                               Copyright Dora Franco 2009

 

                                                  Biography

Virginia Vallejo-Garcia is a Colombian-born author, media personality, socialite and award-winning anchorwoman born August 26th 1949 in Cartago, Valle del Cauca. She lost her career in television after her five-year (1983-1987) romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin cartel. In September 2007, she published Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar 2010), which became an instant bestseller.

She is presently known for her accusations of corruption and genocide against leading Colombian politicians linked to the cartels or the paramilitary, the present Government and the presidential families in control of the media and the distribution of six billion dollars in US military aid to Colombia.
 

Early years

Virginia Vallejo-Garcia is the grand-daughter of Colombian Finance Minister Eduardo Vallejo-Varela (1926-1930), a descendant of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, and of Sofía Jaramillo-Arango, a descendant of Alonso Jaramillo de Andrade Céspedes, the Dukes of Medina-Sidonia, the royal houses of Spain, William the Conqueror, Hugh Capet, Charlemagne, the Byzantine emperors and several saints. She attended the prestigious Anglo Colombian School in Bogotá, founded by her great uncle, Ambassador to London Professor Jaime Jaramillo-Arango. After her graduation in 1967, she worked as an English teacher in Centro Colombo-Americano. In 1969 she married architect Fernando Borrero Caicedo, founder of Borrero, Zamorano & Giovanelli, whom she divorced in 1971.
 

Career in the media

• 1972-1973: Presents a special section with political cartoonist Pepón in ¡Oiga Colombia!, Revista del Sábado (“Listen Colombia!, Saturday Night Review”). Directors: Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernandez de Soto.

• 1973-1975: Co-hosts Éxitos 73, Éxitos 74 and Éxitos 75, 8:00 pm Saturday night musical of THOY Television. Director: Eucario Bermudez.

• News reporter for TV Sucesos-A3, 11:30 pm news. Director: Alberto Acosta.

• 1974-1975: Reporter and film critic for ¡Oiga Colombia!, Revista del Sábado. Directors: Alberto Acosta and Mario Franco.

• 1975: Hosts TV Crucigrama (“TV Crossword”, a contest).

• 1976: Co-hosts Cocine de Primera con Segundo ("Deluxe Cooking with Segundo") with chef Segundo Cabezas.

• 1976-1977: International editor of TV Sucesos-A3, 12:00 pm edition.

• 1978. Elected Board Member of the Asociación Colombiana de Locutores (ACL, Association of Colombian Announcers).

•  Invited by the Taiwanese Government to cover the inauguration of Chiang Ching-kuo.

• Stars in Colombian Connection. Director Gustavo Nieto Roa.

• Marries Argentinian director David Stivel, whom she divorced in 1981.

• 1978-1980: Co-anchor of Noticiero 24 Horas (7:00 pm news). Directors: Mauricio Gómez and Sergio Arboleda.

• 1979.- Wins the 1978 Best Television News Anchor award from the Association of Media Journalists, APE.

• Portrayed in The Beautiful Women of Eldorado, Town and Country, November.

• 1979-1980: Co-hosts ¡Cuidado con las Mujeres! R.T.I. Televisión.

• 1979-1985: Covers the Miss Colombia beauty pageant for different radio stations.

• 1980: Wins the 1979 Best Television News Anchor award of the APE for a second time.

• 1980-1982: Co-hosts ¡Llegaron las Mujeres! In Caraco radio.

• 1981: Founds television production company TV Impacto with journalist Margot Ricci.

• Invited by the Government of Israel to present a special on the Holy Land and Massada.

• Only Colombian journalist present at the wedding of Charles and Diana, Princes of Wales, which she broadcasted for Caracol Radio during six hours.

• 1982-1983: Directs and presents ¡Al Ataque!, produced by TV Impacto.

• 1982-1984: Hosts Hoy por Hoy, Magazín del Lunes (“Today, the Monday Night Magazine”). Director: Fernando Buitrago.

• 1982-1987: Becomes the official image and spokeswoman of Medias Di Lido, the leading Colombian pantyhose brand, for which she makes television commercials in Venice, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan and Cartagena.

• 1983-1984: Co-hosts El Show de las Estrellas (“The Stars’ Show”, Saturday night musical). Director: Jorge Barón.

• 1984: International editor of Grupo Radial Colombiano. Director: Carlos Lemos.

• 1985: Anchorwoman of Telediario 12:30 pm newscast. Director Arturo Abella.

• Appears on the covers of Bazaar and Cosmopolitan.

• El Tiempo’s Elenco magazine names her “The Symbol of an Era”.

• 1988: Wins a scholarship from the German Government and studies economic journalism at the Internationales Institut für Journalismus in Berlin.

• 1991: Returns to Colombia and stars in Sombra de tu Sombra, the 8:00 pm telenovela produced by Caracol TV.

•  Elected Board Member of the Asociación Colombiana de Locutores.

• 1992: Presents the series of interviews Indiscretísimo with Colombian personalities. Director: Manuel Prado.

• 1992-1993: Co-hosts Picantísimo (“Super-Spicy!”, a radio talk show). International editor of Noticiero Todelar (evening radio news). Directors: Juan Alvaro Castellanos, Javier Ayala and Gabriel Ortiz.

• 1999: Magazine Hombre (“Man”) in the December issue namesVirginia Vallejo “One of the ten sexiest Colombian women of the 20th century”.
   

Multilevel Marketing Diamond

In late 1995, Virginia Vallejo initiated her activity in the multilevel marketing industry. As the founding distributor for the Colombian and South American operation of Neways International of Salem and Springville, Utah, she became the first Colombian multilevel marketing Diamond in 1997. In 1998, at the Opryland Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, she was awarded the President’s Cup among almost one million Neways distributors worldwide, but four months later her contract was cancelled and her network of 30,000 Colombians rolled-up to the owners of the company in Utah. In the course of a lawsuit introduced in a Colombian court in January 1999, the defendants fled the country and judicial experts reported the incineration of 14,108 documents, massive adulteration of accounting evidence and the disappearance of 18 books from the court.
 

Trial against Alberto Santofimio, Pablo Escobar's candidate

In July 2006, former senator Alberto Santofimio - Pablo Escobar's link to the élite of the Colombian political class and his choice for president in the 1986-1990 term - was on trial for conspiracy in the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, two years after Escobar and Vallejo’s separation. The journalist offered her testimony to the Colombian Attorney General, but the judge of the case closed it two days later. She then asked the American Government for protection in exchange for her cooperation in USA vs. Mower (Thomas and Leslie DeeAnn, owners of Neways International, then on trial in Utah) and her information on the links of Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez-Orejuela, bosses of the Cali Cartel, with Colombian presidents and prominent political figures. The Rodriguez-Orejuela family had owned Grupo Radial Colombiano, a network of radio stations where Vallejo had worked as International Editor in 1984. The two brothers’ trial was scheduled to begin in September 2006 in Florida and on July 18, 2006 Virginia Vallejo arrived in Miami in a special flight of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The official statement of the American Embassy in Bogotá read: “Today, for safety and security reasons, we have escorted Ms. Virginia Vallejo to the United States, where her cooperation is sought in ongoing drug investigations”. The news created a media frenzy in Colombia and appeared on the front page of 42 leading newspapers worldwide.
 

Testimony against the Colombian politicians tied to the drug cartels

On July 24, 2006, a video that Virginia Vallejo had taped for the brother of senator Galán in the event that she was killed after offering to testify against Santofimio was aired on television with a 58% rating and a fourteen million audience. She described how Santofimio had instigated her lover to eliminate senator Galán at least on three occasions between 1983 and 1985. Polls gave her 78% credibility.

Virginia Vallejo could not enter the US Witness Protection Program because her information on crimes committed by the drug cartels with presidents, politicians, military and journalists was too old to be included as evidence against the Cali cartel bosses in the ongoing trial for their crimes of 1997. Due to her lack of financial resources to stay in the USA and for humanitarian reasons, the DOJ offered to return her to Colombia in a specially chartered jet and place her under the protection of the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, and all the cooperation of the US Government while she processed her political asylum from Colombia, where all the major publishing houses were interested in her story. Virginia Vallejo chose to stay in the USA, because in Colombia key witnesses who offer their cooperation to the criminal justice system and whistleblowers of the American Embassy are often murdered or disappeared.

 In September 2006 the Rodríguez-Orejuela brothers pleaded guilty without going to trial; they were given thirty years and their frozen 2.1 billion dollar fortune was split between the Governments of the United States and Colombia. In November 2006, Thomas and Leslie DeeAnn Mower were sentenced to serve time in Utah for tax fraud and obstruction of Justice. In October 2007, Alberto Santofimio was found guilty and given twenty-four years.
 

Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

In Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar (Random House Mondadori 2007) the Colombian journalist describes Pablo Escobar’s rise and downfall, their contrasting worlds of high society and new wealth, his evolution from politician and benefactor of the poor to terrorist; the links of the drug trade to Colombian presidents and Caribbean dictators on one hand, and to paramilitary and rebel organizations, on the other; historic events like the Palace of Justice siege, the massacre of the Supreme Court Justices, the assassination of four presidential candidates and her lover’s manipulation of the criminal justice system and the media in an almost-totally corrupted country. Another key part of the book are the origins of Escobar’s war with the Cali Cartel and the events that led to Virginia Vallejo’s cooperation with Interpol after their separation in 1987 and to Escobar's death in December 2, 1993.

Virginia Vallejo states that the explosive growth of the drug industry that turned Escobar and his partners into overnight billionaires in the early 1980s was based on one thing: the licenses for private landing strips, airplanes and helicopters granted by Alvaro Uribe to the drug lords in 1980-1982 when he headed the Colombian Civil Aviation Agency.

Political asylum case

Virginia Vallejo's political asylum case is based on political opinion and the U.N. Convention against Torture, and on humanitarian reasons based on the murder, torture, rape, persecution, imprisonment or exile of other journalists who have denounced crimes committed by the military and the Government of Alvaro Uribe with the Santos family against union leaders, human rights activists, indigenous leaders, students, women, girls and hundreds of teenagers murdered by the Army to claim rewards for rebels killed in combat. (See the false positives scandal).

On February 14, 2009 Myles Frechette, US Ambassador to Colombia during the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) and the political scandal known as the “Proceso 8000”, expressed his concern over the connections of Cesar Villegas, Director of Projects of the Colombian Civil Aviation Agency, with drug traffickers. Villegas was murdered in 2002, on the eve of a meeting with officers of the American Embassy in Bogota. Colombian former president Cesar Gaviria has recently accused the Presidential Palace, Casa de Narino, of “weeping over Pablo Escobar’s death”.
 

Stories by news agencies and American media prior to  political asylum hearings

Two weeks after Virginia Vallejo's arrival in Miami, Cambio magazine, news agency EFE of Spain, AFP and Colombian media accused her of “fleeing to Cuba to escape the Colombian and American justice systems”. On September 5th 2006, El Nuevo Herald posted the story on its front page. RCN Radio quoted the Colombian Consulate in Miami as their source and then edited Virginia Vallejo's testimony to present her as an accomplice in the murder of Luis Carlos Galan. (The assassination was committed by Escobar in 1989 when Virginia Vallejo was living in Germany, engaged to a German entrepreneur and cooperating with Interpol.) Univision edited  another television interview to present the former anchor woman as an accomplice of Escobar and Santofimio's. Despite dozens of requirements by Virginia Vallejo to correct the false information, El Nuevo Herald and Univision refused to do so and told her that they would continue to reproduce anything that international agencies published about her. EFE, on their part, informed her they would continue to reproduce anything that the Colombian media published.

On June 30th 2009, EFE accused Virginia Vallejo of ordering the murder of Luis Carlos Galan. The Latin American Herald Tribune and other media based in Florida reproduced the news. To this day, the author and journalist has never traveled to Cuba or had any judicial requirements in any country.
 

 Testimony in the reopened Palace of Justice siege case

On July 11th 2008, Fiscal Angela Buitrago of the Colombian General Attorney’s Office ordered Virginia Vallejo’s testimony in the reopened case of the Palace of Justice siege, committed by the rebel group M-19 in November 1985.

Vallejo’s testimony, protected by judicial secrecy, was filtered to El Tiempo, which published excerpts on August 16, 2008 and forwarded it to Noticias Uno. In a radio interview to Caracol on August 27, 2008, the former anchorwoman accused the military of adulterating it to cover up the crimes committed by the army during the siege. She confirmed that Escobar had financed the coup to prevent his extradition to the United States. She accused the military of setting the Palace on fire to destroy 1800 files of cases of human rights violations and the murder of the Supreme Court Justices to leave no witnesses of the carnage, and Colonel Edilberto Sanchez-Rubiano and Military Intelligence of the torture and forced disappearance of the innocent employees of the cafeteria. She described the photographs of sixteen brutally tortured bodies that had been sent to her with a threatening letter in mid 1986 and which, according to Escobar, belonged to the people detained after the siege.

On October 23, 2008 Alberto Santofimio was freed on basis of the principle of the reasonable doubt. On October 30th, , Colonel Edilberto Sanchez Rubiano was freed for statute of limitations after paying a US $4,000 fine.

Criminal complaints for defamation against Colombian media

On October 17th 2008, Virginia Vallejo filed criminal complaint number 26095 for libel and slander in the Colombian Attorney’s General Office against Fernando Rodriguez-Mondragon, a former convict son of Cali Cartel boss Gilberto Rodriguez’s his ghost-writer and Oveja Negra-Quintero Editores. Due to criminal complaints for piracy introduced in 1993 by Colombian Nobel prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez against his erstwhile publishers, Virginia Vallejo had ignored Oveja Negra’s offer to publish Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar.  

On December 5th 2008, Virginia Vallejo filed criminal complaint number 32205 against Semana magazine, its director Alejandro Santos and journalists Antonio Caballero and Sandra Janer. The criminal case in the Colombian Attorneys General’s Office is supported by dozens of pages of evidence of libel, slander, promotion of the pirate edition of “Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar” and instigation to hate crimes against her life, integrity, estate and fundamental rights. (Semana’s publisher is Felipe Lopez-Caballero, a son of former president Alfonso Lopez and Cecilia Caballero described in Vallejo’s book as a close collaborator of Pablo Escobar’s and his wife, Maria Isabel Santos-Caballero.

On December 30th 2008, Virginia Vallejo filed criminal complaint number 34379 in the Colombian Attorney General’s Office against El Tiempo, its erstwhile director Enrique Santos-Calderon, brother of Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, and several journalists and contributors for libel, slander, promotion of the pirate edition of her book instigation to hate crimes under the unauthorized reproduction of her intellectual property by the newspaper. The criminal complaint against El Tiempo included charges for the adulteration of her testimony in the Palace of Justice siege case.


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