The nanny of Laura Sarabia's son was subjected to the polygraph of the Presidency after the disappearance of several thousand dollars

The caregiver of the son of Laura Sarabia, Gustavo Petro's chief of staff, was subjected to polygraph in January at the Presidency of Colombia after the disappearance in the official's house of a briefcase with several thousand dollars. Marelbys Meza told Semana magazine that she felt intimidated and pressured by a burglary at Sarabia's home that she said she had not committed. The worker reported what she considered harassment to the prosecutor's office, which decided to protect her.

Sarabia has said publicly on Saturday that she and her family were victims of a robbery and that the prosecutor's office itself is investigating the woman as a possible culprit. Petro's right-hand man assures that the presidential protection headquarters and the police acted according to the protocols established by law. "I ask her if she is willing to undergo the polygraph, like my whole security scheme. She tells me she had no problem. I never forced her," Sarabia told the magazine.

Marelbys Meza has said that on January 30 she was taken to a building attached to the presidential residence, where the polygraph and several officials were waiting for her. According to her, he was there for four and a half hours. The nanny says she didn't want to go, but if she didn't, she would be more suspicious of the theft. "When I was in the basement I felt kidnapped, dazed, drowned, waiting for them to do my polygraph," she says, and says that her mobile phone was taken away and she was incommunicado.

In the days that followed, the woman felt watched. When she was taking her mother to the bus station to go on a trip, she was approached by officers who took her to a police station. "They open all our suitcases, they check us thing by thing, they told us what we had there. (...). I said: they'll think I'm sending my mom with the money in my suitcase," she says. His brother Jamer, an Uber driver, was also questioned by police officers who, according to Meza's account, called him a thief and demanded that he return the money.

Sarabia later fired the worker with a text message. The chief of staff told him that the investigation was going to be long and that the best thing they could do was to separate their paths. In that case, it was better to liquidate him and look for another job. During this time, the nanny has gone to testify at the Sijin, the police investigation unit, where she was asked questions, took her statement and connected in a video call with a court-appointed lawyer.

Sarabia has said his security applied all appropriate protocols. "It was about $3,500 or $4,000. And another money that he had taken out to pay for a card, about 5 million pesos (1,125 dollars)," explains the official about the amount of money lost. In the complaint he filed with the prosecutor's office, however, there is talk of 7,000. In the expansion of the complaint, Sarabia asks to investigate whether Marelbys Meza is being "instrumentalized or induced to circulate information that does not correspond to the truth." "In the event that the above is established, I respectfully request that you adopt protection measures for victims of disinformation processes."

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