ILLUSTRATION/FORBIDDEN STORIES.
By PATRICK MAYOYO
Six months after the assassination of Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno, 30 journalists, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, pursued his investigations into allegations of wide-scale corruption in the province of Córdoba, revealing a system of cronyism in public works contracts potentially to the tune of several million dollars.
Alongside Forbidden Stories, 32 media outlets around the world, including The Guardian, El País America, El Espectador, France 24, Le Monde… are now publishing “The Rafael Project“. This collaborative investigation was launched last October, a few days after the murder of Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno.
Before his death, Rafael had asked Forbidden Stories to continue his work if something happened to him. He had sheltered his sensitive information via the “Safebox Network,” a tool that allows threatened journalists to protect their investigations.
For six months, 30 journalists worked together to continue Rafael’s work on endemic corruption and mining operations in Córdoba, the region where he lived in northern Colombia.
Through the systematic analysis of hundreds of public contracts and documents that Rafael had not made public, the consortium’s journalists estimated that millions of euros in public funds were potentially diverted.
They also revealed the extent of favoritism and clientelism in this region dominated by rival political families and cartels like the dangerous Clan del Golfo.
“If you have to kill me, kill me. But I am telling you to your face: you won’t silence me.”
It was with these words, spoken in a 37-minute Facebook live on July 21, 2022, that Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno defied his detractors and predicted his own demise.
In the video, Moreno wears a hat and a white polo shirt with the name of his online media: Voces de Córdoba. For more than half an hour, the investigative journalist, who in addition to running two Facebook pages had also recently opened a bar and grill to make ends meet, vigorously denounces corruption in the region of Córdoba. This region, north of Medellin, is one of the poorest and most violent parts of the country – and a strategic corridor for drug smuggling. It is also one of the most corrupt.
Kiara Sánchez (left), Rafael’s wife, and Maira Moreno (right), his sister, in Rafael’s apartment five days after his murder. PHOTO/FORBIDDEN STORIES.
Reading from his screen, Moreno cites artificially inflated contracts, unfinished public works projects and companies profiting off rampant corruption and embezzlement. “They steal from the municipality,” he says at one point in the video. “Somebody should put their finger on the corruption in this region.”
Since the 2016 Peace Accords between the Colombian government and the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC by its Spanish initials), Moreno had made reporting on corruption and drug trafficking his specialty.
An obsession, even. Voces de Córdoba, launched in 2018, spared no one – from local politicians to mining companies to paramilitary groups. Sometimes bordering on the excessive, Moreno’s tone and the rising number of followers on his page – about 56,000 – did not go unnoticed.
Three weeks prior to posting the video, Moreno found an anonymous note on his motorcycle, accompanied by a bullet, which he now holds in front of the camera.
“Now you know that we know all your movements, where you go, when you wake up, when you go to sleep,” he reads. “We know where you go out for drinks in Montelíbano [the city he lived in], we know everything about you and we are not going to forgive you for what you are doing. So now you know, my friend, that the rest of the magazine of this 9 mm [gun] is ready for you.”
Several months later, on October 16, 2022, just after 7 pm, Moreno was closing his bar and grill when a man wearing a baseball cap came into the restaurant. The man took out a revolver and fired three times at Moreno, killing him instantly. As of this writing, the assassin is still on the loose.
As he predicted, Moreno was killed. But thanks to documents and instructions left behind by the journalist, he was not silenced.
For the past six months, 30 journalists have come together to pursue Moreno’s work, in keeping with requests he made before his death. Several days before his assassination, Moreno had been in contact with Forbidden Stories with the aim of joining the Safebox Network, which allows threatened journalists to upload and protect their sensitive information.
Rafael Moreno shows the bullet he received in the trunk of his motorcycle, along with a threatening note, in a Facebook Live on July 21, 2022. PHOTO/FORBIDDEN STORIES.
If something happens to them, Forbidden Stories and our network of partners can pursue their work and ensure that their stories are read by a maximum number of people around the world.
Hundreds of documents and emails accessed by the Forbidden Stories consortium helped Forbidden Stories pursue Moreno’s work on corruption and embezzlement. Today, we are publishing these investigations alongside 32 media partners around the world.
Through Forbidden Stories analysis of documents Moreno left behind, as well as other public contracts obtained through freedom of information requests in the municipalities Moreno reported on, ground reporting and interviews with dozens of sources, our consortium can reveal a massive system of cronyism in the province of Córdoba and the probable embezzlement of up to several million dollars across five municipalities – a vast scheme Moreno had spent his career trying to take down and may have paid for with his life.
The Voice of Córdoba
Four days after the assassination of her husband, Kiara Sánchez went back to the apartment that had served as the journalist’s office for the first time. She was accompanied by other family members and journalists from the Forbidden Stories consortium.
The first thing that stood out was a heap of administrative documents on the table, the result of hundreds of freedom of information requests Moreno had filed asking for details about public contracts. In Colombia, these types of requests are a powerful tool for obtaining public interest information.
But though they are relatively easy to fill out, they can be risky for the author – especially in dangerous regions like Córdoba. Here, Moreno was one of the few journalists brave enough to file these requests. And he did so with gusto. In the ten days prior to his murder, he had submitted four.
For Moreno, journalism alone wasn’t enough to pay the bills. In 2022, he had opened a carwash and bar and grill – the same one he’d later be shot at – which he called “Rafo Parilla.” Each week, he’d borrow a friend’s car and drive five hours to buy fish to sell to his neighbors.
Despite these activities, he also found the time to share videos and content on two Facebook pages he ran: “Rafael Moreno investigator” and “Voces de Córdoba.” On these pages, no one was untouchable. Councilors, mayors, governors, even fellow journalists, found themselves in Moreno’s line of fire. “You’re going too far,” Moreno’s sister Maira remembers telling Moreno. “You’d even be willing to denounce your own sister.” Moreno’s response: “Yes, if you did bad things.”
Moreno had no limits when it came to denouncing corruption, friends and family said. “He was constantly throwing banana peels,” Rafael Martínez, the cabinet secretary in Puerto Libertador, the region Moreno came from, and a longtime friend of the journalist, said in an interview with a member of the consortium. “Anybody could have killed him.”
Read the full investigation here.