Juan Manuel Santos

PRESIDENT, COLOMBIA (2010-PRESENT)

About

Juan Manuel Santos has been Colombia’s president since 2010, having served previously as finance minister from 2000 to 2002 and foreign trade minister from 1991 to 1994. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for contributing to the end of the nation’s long-running internal conflict with the Marxist guerrilla organization known as FARC.

In the Data

Files from the Barbados corporate registry show Santos listed as a director of Global Tuition & Education Insurance Corp., a tax-exempt insurance company , until May 2001. Beginning in 1998, when Global Tuition was incorporated, its directors included a number of people close to Cesar Gaviria, Colombia’s president from 1990 to 1994 and later secretary general of the Organization of American States. The directors included members of Gaviria’s family, as well as his communications adviser at OAS and Morris D. Busby, who served as U.S. ambassador to Colombia during Gaviria’s term. Santos was also a member of Gaviria’s administration in the early 1990s.

The Barbados registry files also list Santos as a director of tax-exempt insurer Nova Holding Company Ltd. from April to May 2000.

Both the Barbados companies, Global Tuition and Nova Holdings, are shareholders in Global Education Group Colombia S.A. – which provides prepaid-tuition plans – and Global Tuition’s stake exceeds 90 percent. Global Education was founded by Gabriel Silva Luján, who later served as Colombian defense minister, and Santos was a board member in 1998, according to corporate records.

RESPONSE

Santos said that he resigned from Global Tuition in 2000 before his appointment as finance minister. “I never invested one single peso [in the company], and I was never a shareholder,” he wrote in response to questions from El Espectador and Connectas, ICIJ’s media partners in Colombia. His position as board member was unpaid, Santos said. Silva said he incorporated Global Tuition in Barbados to create a central hub for his group’s business.

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