Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia Presidential Candidate, Oversaw The Company Managing Elections

The Huffington Post, Bogotá, 18/06/2010, extracto.-

The man most likely to become Colombia's next president this Sunday has played a previously undisclosed role as a corporate officer of the company hired to run the nation's elections over the last decade, while he was a political leader, business records obtained by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund show.

The role of Juan Manuel Santos - a former defense minister in the government of current president Alvaro Uribe and a scion of one of the nation's most powerful families - is not widely known in the South American country, where his family controls some of the leading news organizations and there are reports of voting irregularities.

Riding on Uribe's coattails and backed by the massive political machine of Uribe's party, known simply as 'U,' Santos is 39 points ahead in polls over Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus, a mathematician and former Bogotá mayor who vows to banish the nation's rampant corruption and cronyism.

That has prompted Santos to counter with his own messages about fighting corruption - and to insist on transparent politics in his own campaign. 'I have the most radical and convincing proposal against corruption,' Santos told reporters, adding he plans on creating special investigative units to tackle corruption.

But documents obtained from Colombia's Camera de Comercio - the private national Chamber of Commerce - raise questions about a possible conflict of interest and show that he may not be so committed to transparency as it seems. The documents listing the board's membership made clear that he sat for several years on the board of directors of a securities firm that manages election logistics- from printing voting cards to transporting stuffed ballot boxes - while at the same time heading Uribe's 'U' political party.

Santos' campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.