Colombia's Anti-Corruption Transition:
What Is the New Government Really Finding?

Political analysis · Colombia 2026

At some point in 2026, Colombia is about to change governments. Abelardo de la Espriella has just won the presidential election. What comes next is not the inauguration speech, not the official parade. What comes first is an audit. It's called an empalme — and for the first time in recent Colombian history, this transition team gave it a surname that says more than it appears: anti-corruption.

George Castro, who has built companies, managed organizations, and had more than 2,000 employees on payroll throughout his career, hears those two words and stops. Names are never accidental.

Would You Buy a Company Without Reviewing Its Debts First?

Imagine you're buying a company tomorrow. Would you sign the transfer agreement without reviewing the financial statements? Without knowing the income, the debts, without verifying the pending contracts you'd be inheriting? Of course not.

Castro asks the same question about countries. A government transition isn't handing over a stack of folders and a set of keys. A proper transition is a complete X-ray of the State — the moment one government says to the next: "Here's how we received this country, and here's how we're handing it to you." But it's also the moment when the new government has an obligation to verify whether that photograph actually corresponds to reality. Governing on faulty information leads inevitably to faulty decisions.

The scale is dizzying: thousands of contracts, thousands of officials, embassies and buildings, trillions of pesos in budget, ongoing construction projects, judicial processes, international commitments, classified information, technology systems, military forces, diplomatic relations — all changing hands in a matter of days. That's why a transition must exist.

The incoming team of Abelardo de la Espriella understood this long before winning. José Manuel Restrepo reveals that the process began roughly 8 months earlier — before the election, when it wasn't yet clear they would win. They called it the Noah's Ark. Castro grasps the metaphor immediately: Noah didn't start building the ark when the flood began. He built it long before, when most people thought it wasn't necessary, when there was no crisis yet, when everything seemed fine. Prepare before receiving the problem, not after. The team mobilized 535 people across 22 specialized work fronts: security, health, education, infrastructure, international relations, energy, technology, justice, defense, agriculture — because a country functions as an enormous interconnected system and trying to understand it from a single team would be impossible.

Why "Anti-Corruption" and Not Simply "Transition"?

Names communicate, generate expectations, and reveal priorities. The word "anti-corruption" in the name isn't decorative: it establishes a working hypothesis from the outset. Not just reviewing the state of the administration — actively looking for possible irregularities, inconsistencies and risks. That changes the entire scope of the process, from reviewing desks to cross-referencing information, verifying figures against documents, and understanding what was done, what wasn't done, and what reality the new government is actually inheriting.

Castro goes further on the definition of corruption. When most people hear that word, they picture stolen money, cash-stuffed suitcases, rigged contracts. That is also corruption. But a State also deteriorates when information doesn't reflect reality, when figures don't correspond to results, when multi-million-dollar projects remain unfinished, when institutions lose technical capacity, when public resources are managed without planning. And here Castro speaks from decades of business administration: "A company can go bankrupt without anyone stealing a single dollar. It's enough to administer it badly or make bad decisions." If that's possible in a company, it's possible in a country.

And there is a detail Castro identifies as the most revolutionary finding of the entire presentation — and the one that received the least attention: the transition team used an AI-supported platform. For decades, transitions depended on thousands of folders, binders, reports, spreadsheets, and endless meetings. Artificial intelligence now allows crossing millions of data points in seconds, detecting inconsistencies, connecting contracts across government, finding patterns that would be practically impossible to identify manually. Castro is precise about its limits: "Artificial intelligence doesn't decide, doesn't accuse, doesn't convict, and it doesn't govern." What it does is help find relevant information so that people can make better decisions. We are entering a new era of public administration.

Concern or Irregularity? The Difference Matters

What the transition team found, José Manuel Restrepo calls concerns — and that word is, according to Castro, the most important word in the entire process. He doesn't say crimes. He doesn't say convictions. He doesn't say guilty parties. He says concerns.

A concern is not a sentence, but it is an alert — a preliminary finding, an indication that invites deeper review. In a polarized country like Colombia, it's easy to fall into one of two extremes: everything is fine, or absolutely everything is catastrophic. A concern lives in more honest territory: something deserves a closer look.

Castro uses the business analogy: a new manager receives financial statements and finds delayed projects, incomplete contracts, inventory discrepancies, missing information. Can he immediately declare that a crime occurred? No. The responsible thing is to investigate, verify, ask, reconcile, contrast — and only then draw conclusions. "What you can't measure you can't improve" — to which Castro adds his own principle: "What you don't identify can never be corrected."

The first specific concern: the Unidad Nacional de Protección (UNP). Castro explains what it is for anyone unfamiliar: it's the Colombian equivalent of the United States Secret Service. It protects the president, Supreme Court justices, prosecutors, journalists, social leaders, former ministers, mayors, congressional members — people who face extraordinary risks. The concern: in the final days of the outgoing government, a decree was issued modifying the requirements for incorporating new protection officers. Castro doesn't say it's illegal. He says that from a transparency and institutional oversight perspective, it's a decision that raises legitimate questions. Why modify such a sensitive rule at the very end of a government? What problem was being solved? Was there an urgent operational need, or was there another reason?

His principle: "The greater the impact of a decision, the greater its obligation to public explanation." When we're talking about State security — the people responsible for protecting those who hold public office — any change in selection standards demands absolute transparency. Serious questions deserve serious answers.

What Do Government Finances Actually Hide?

Here Castro does something that distinguishes him from any other political analyst: he translates. Restrepo talks about primary deficit, medium-term fiscal framework, fiscal rule, unrecognized debts. Castro stops and makes a commitment in this channel: "We will never use difficult words to seem smarter. We'll do exactly the opposite. We'll translate them."

Primary deficit: A family earns 10 million pesos per month. But even before paying interest on their loans, they've already spent 12 million. They're 2 million short just to keep the household running. That, multiplied by a country's budget, is a primary deficit. Fiscal framework: The same family sits down in January and plans the whole year — what they'll earn, spend, and save. For the Colombian State, that document is the medium-term fiscal framework: the country's grand financial plan and roadmap. Fiscal rule: A bank telling you: no matter what you earn, I won't lend you more than 40% of your income. Countries have similar rules to avoid borrowing indefinitely.

And the most important concern: unrecognized debts. The family says it owes 50 million pesos. But "forgets" to mention 30 million on the credit card, 20 million on the car, and 15 million owed to a relative. Did the family's economic reality change? No — the debt already existed. The only thing that changed was the available information. Restrepo says there exist obligations — health system obligations, energy sector obligations, payments pending from prior years — that are not yet fully reflected in the fiscal picture presented to the country.

Then comes the external data. Restrepo cites figures from Economies.com (linked to The Economist) and the World Bank through December 2025. Among 52 tracked economies, Colombia ranks in the top 5 for highest inflation, top 5 for highest unemployment, top 5 for highest fiscal deficit, and top 5 for largest public debt increase. In the World Bank's growth ranking across 150 economies, Colombia sits at position 110.

Castro translates each indicator so no one is left behind. Inflation: it's not an academic concept — it's that last year 100,000 pesos filled a shopping cart and this year you need 115,000 for exactly the same items. It's the cost of living, it's what families can afford. Unemployment: it's the percentage of people who want to work but can't find a job. Each percentage point represents thousands of families, thousands of life projects. Public debt: not inherently bad — every country borrows. The important question is for what purpose, and whether that debt remains sustainable. Growing debt reduces future governments' room to maneuver.

Castro doesn't ask citizens to automatically choose one narrative. He asks them to review the evidence — to ask what each indicator measures, how it's calculated, and what story it's actually telling. "Statistics don't vote. They simply describe a reality that then requires interpretation."

The Castro Method: Translating What Colombia Needs to Understand

Behind every technical concept — deficit, inflation, debt, fiscal framework, transition, UNP — there are people. Families in Bogotá, business owners in Medellín, workers in the Coffee Region, young people in Cali looking for jobs, elderly Colombians in Barranquilla waiting for better healthcare. Citizens who simply want to live in a country that works.

Governments come and go; institutions remain. That's why a government transition should not be understood as political revenge — it should be understood as an exercise in responsibility toward the country. When the new government finds doubts, it has an obligation to investigate them: not to fuel headlines, but to protect confidence in institutions. And when that investigation is conducted with documents, evidence, and rigor, it produces something Colombia needs: real answers to real questions.

We live in an era that frequently invites us to choose sides before knowing the facts, to applaud before understanding, or to condemn before investigating. Castro believes Colombia deserves better: citizens who ask questions, who read, who compare, who listen to different perspectives and build their own conclusions. Serious questions deserve serious answers. And those answers only arrive with documents, with evidence, and with institutions that function.