The U.S. Treasury Department announced Friday that it is sanctioning Colombian President Gustavo Petro for “contributing to the global illegal drug trade.” Petro’s wife and son, as well as Colombia’s interior minister, were also sanctioned.
“Since President Gustavo Petro took power, cocaine production in Colombia has surged to the highest levels in decades, flooding the United States and addicting Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
Petro, who has previously denied such accusations, immediately reacted to the announcement, telling X that he has hired an American lawyer and intends to fight the sanctions.
“This action comes from a government in the very society that has been fighting drug trafficking for decades, and doing so effectively, and has done so much to curb cocaine consumption,” Petro said, referring to the United States. “It’s a total contradiction, but we will never take a step back and we will never kneel.”
Tensions between Petro’s government and US President Donald Trump have been rising in recent months, especially since the US began increasing military activity in the Southern Caribbean.
Petro harshly criticized the US military’s attacks on suspected drug smuggling in the region, accusing the US of being a “murderer”. He suggested that some of the boats were carrying innocent Colombians.
Two people briefed by the Pentagon told CNN earlier this month that at least one U.S. attack in the Caribbean in the past two months targeted a Colombian national on a boat departing from Colombia. Another attack on a submarine resulted in two survivors, one of whom was Colombian.
Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, described the sanctions on Petro as “the privatization of a bilateral crisis.”
“There’s really no problem between the United States and Colombia on a day-to-day level or on an organizational level. The problem is this personal crisis, this personal conflict,” he told CNN, noting that this is not the first time there have been disagreements between the United States and Bogotá.
“Colombian military and security forces have been working with the United States for nearly 40 years,” she told CNN. “They are by far the most capable and motivated U.S. partners in the region.”
Colombia has long been the United States government’s most reliable ally in South America regarding national security and defense. In 2022, the Biden administration designated Andean countries as “major non-NATO allies.”
The sanctions were imposed days after President Trump halted “all payments” to Colombia and claimed Petro was “doing nothing to stop” the country’s drug production. The U.S. State Department also revoked Petro’s visa at the close of the United Nations General Assembly last month.
CNN has reached out to Colombia’s president for further comment.
Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti also criticized the sanctions in a post about X, writing: “I have never entered a drug trafficker’s house.”
“For the United States, a statement of nonviolence is the same as a drug trafficker,” Benedetti added. “Gringo go home.”
In a post, Petro’s son Nicolas called the move “unprecedented political and judicial persecution” and said he would “turn to international institutions to protect my rights.”
The US Treasury announced that Nicolás Petro was arrested in Colombia in 2023 on “charges of money laundering and illicit enrichment for allegedly channeling funds received from drug traffickers into Gustavo Petro’s ‘Total Peace’ efforts and campaign.” Nicolas Petro disputed this, saying prosecutors said the case had nothing to do with drug trafficking or the presidential election.
