Colombia's Far-Right Candidate Built Career Defending Paramilitaries and Maduro's Ally

Abelardo de la Espriella owns Louis Vuitton loafers, maintains a collection of more than twenty colognes organized by time of day, and keeps bottles of alcohol worth over ten thousand dollars each. The forty-seven-year-old criminal defense lawyer and far-right presidential candidate for Colombia speaks openly about his private jet, his annual shopping trips to Italy, and the wine-and-cheese pairings his father taught him to appreciate. His wife has mentioned that if they lose the upcoming presidential election, they can simply return to their homes in Italy or the United States, where they also hold citizenship. Yet despite this life of visible luxury and no prior experience in public office, de la Espriella has positioned himself as a champion of the forgotten masses—"the never," as his campaign calls them—riding a wave of first-round support by promising hardline security solutions and a break from traditional politics.

The persona is the message. On stage, he ignites fireworks, launches drones, and dances alongside AI-generated videos of tigers, the animal with which he identifies himself. His campaign rails against abortion rights and same-sex adoption while deploying misogynistic commentary toward journalists and gay politicians who challenge him. But the spectacle masks a career built on defending the indefensible. Over more than two decades in public life, de la Espriella has represented paramilitaries, mafia figures, pyramid scheme operators, and Alex Saab, the front man for Nicolás Maduro's financial networks. He is, in the words of Argentine political strategist Ángel Becassino, who wrote an authorized biography of him in 2012, a man who functions as pure theater—someone who has spent his entire life performing, desperate to be the star of every courtroom, every broadcast, every scandal.

De la Espriella was born in Bogotá but raised in Montería, a Caribbean city known for cattle ranching, cumbia music, and producing major political figures. His father, also named Abelardo, was a lawyer and judge who became close to former president Álvaro Uribe—close enough that Uribe appointed him to notary positions in Cartagena and Bogotá. The father ran twice for governor of Córdoba in the nineteen-nineties and lost both times, a failure that marked him deeply. "I don't believe in depression," a regional journalist said, "but the old man suffered greatly from losing twice." The electoral ambition the father could not achieve, the son now embodies. De la Espriella has said his father inspired him to become a lawyer, though more for the power of persuasion than for legal principle. "I understood from childhood that a man's true strength lies in his ability to convince others," he wrote in his biography. "Words replaced the sword."

Yet words were not his only interest. He acted in his school's theater group, worked at a local radio station called La Voz de Montería in the nineteen-eighties, and cultivated a minor celebrity status by interviewing visiting dignitaries. "For me, standing in front of a camera or microphone is like standing in my own backyard," he would later boast. He studied law at the Universidad Sergio Arboleda in Bogotá, a conservative institution where he was remembered not as the brightest or laziest student but as someone who spoke forcefully, loved to argue about politics, and made himself impossible to ignore. A well-known radio host named Juan Gossain, also from Córdoba, invited him to contribute to RCN's influential radio panel. By the early years of Uribe's presidency, de la Espriella was a regular voice on one of the country's most-listened-to programs.

His legal career began modestly in nineteen-ninety-nine with small labor and civil cases—whatever work would keep the office open while he waited for something bigger. That something arrived in two thousand and two when Uribe opened a pathway for paramilitary demobilization. De la Espriella saw opportunity. He began defending the major paramilitary commanders, arguing they were political actors rather than drug traffickers. In two thousand and four, he founded the Fipaz foundation to prevent their extradition to the United States. His firm's annual revenue jumped from eleven million pesos to two billion—nearly a million dollars at the time—according to reporting by journalist Daniel Coronell in two thousand and six. He had transformed himself from a middle-class novice into a lawyer of spectacular wealth. "The paramilitaries were used by many who today deny and disown them," he said then. He later defended politicians accused of allying with those same paramilitaries, including the former congresswoman Eleonora Pineda, whom he described as a childhood friend of his mother. She was convicted in two thousand and eight for parapolítica—the crime of collaborating with paramilitaries.

But his wealth and prominence came with accusations. In two thousand and ten, narcotrafficker Juan Carlos Tuso Sierra claimed that de la Espriella had demanded one million dollars to ensure his participation in the transitional justice system created for demobilized paramilitaries, and had asked millions from other paramilitary leaders to "touch" magistrates of the Constitutional Court. De la Espriella denied the allegations and produced a later video in which Sierra retracted them. David Murcia Guzmán, who ran a massive financial pyramid scheme that the Uribe government shut down in two thousand and eight, made similar accusations. "He's a thief, a traitor, he left me hanging," Murcia said recently. He claimed de la Espriella had asked for seven hundred sixty million pesos to influence congressmen and that he had paid five billion pesos in legal fees before being abandoned when he wanted to surrender to prosecutors. Murcia was eventually extradited to the United States for money laundering. De la Espriella's most controversial client was Alex Saab, Maduro's known financial operative, now in U.S. custody on charges of money laundering and bribery. Journalist Gerardo Reyes reported that de la Espriella "kept Saab and his family out of jail using tricks," including allegedly leaking information about an arrest operation in Barranquilla so Saab could flee the country—something de la Espriella has always denied. Journalist Daniel Coronell recently reported that de la Espriella received at least three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars from companies Saab used for illegal business in Venezuela.

Two weeks before the election, when a journalist asked de la Espriella about a statement he made in two thousand and fifteen—"ethics has nothing to do with law"—he called her ignorant. He had used that phrase while defending Jorge Pretelt, a Constitutional Court magistrate accused of demanding five hundred million pesos to favor a client. De la Espriella's point was that what is unethical is not necessarily illegal. Several other lawyers pushed back: what is legal, as in Nazi Germany, is not always ethical. "It seemed terrible to me," said Ángela María Buitrago, a former justice minister under Gustavo Petro. "The fact that you litigate doesn't mean any tool is fair game to win." For many in the legal profession, de la Espriella represents a philosophy of anything goes. One lawyer who knows his work well described him as someone who "likes to win, and to win, anything goes." He is shrewd, capable of manipulating circumstances to his advantage, and willing to surround himself with people smarter than he is. "But he's not the tiger he's selling himself as," the lawyer warned. "He's more of a cat—he always lands on his feet." Those who admire him defend his methods. "I'd describe him as a heavyweight lawyer: direct, a good speaker, results-oriented," said Iván Cancino, who supports his campaign. "He's strong, intelligent, a very good lawyer, and I never saw him cross an ethical line," said Francisco Bernate, who has worked with him occasionally. What de la Espriella has not managed to convince is the independent press, which has spent years investigating his ties to paramilitaries and to Saab. Beyond calling journalists ignorant when they ask uncomfortable questions, he has filed defamation suits against more than twenty reporters, according to a count by La Silla Vacía—a strategy that reveals his fury when he cannot control the narrative of his own performance. As he prepares for what may be the biggest show of his life, the question is whether Colombian voters will see the tiger or the cat.