Who is Laura Sarabia, Petro's young right hand who resigned as a chancellor of Colombia after facing several scandals and occupying different positions in the government

This process is planned, which is currently in private hands, passes to a Colombian public entity and another Portuguese.

Last week, however, Sarabia had said that the current contract with the private should be extended, because apparently the new system was not going to be ready on time and there was a risk that the expedition of passport was paralyzed.

President Petro and his office boss, Alfredo Saade, disallowed it and confirmed that the transition to the new system will occur without extending the current contract.

Sarabia leaves the Foreign Ministry after just five months in office, which he assumed with just 30 years. Today is 31.

That was the fourth high position of the government that he occupied by designation of Petro.

The outgoing Chancellor spent a few years of being an unknown person among public opinion to being a powerful official in which the president deposited his trust.

That Petro gave him such prominence in his government, he aroused suspicion, but he justified the successive appointments highlighting his abilities.

In fact, by reacting Thursday to his resignation, he said that Sarabia was “vital” for his presidential campaign for his “order and discipline” and described it as an “organizing ant.”

His departure is the end point of a distancing with Petro that had started several months ago for a dispute between factions within the government.

Laura Sarabia was a divisive figure in the cabinet.

“They do not seem to me (…) Laura Sarabia's attitudes with us, with me, that I have to say: 'Respirate.

The former Minister of Environment, Susana Muhamad, on the other hand, accused Sarabia before the means of “locking” the president, since it worked as a kind of filter between Petro and the other senior officials.

Sarabia, who is political scientist, grew in a Bogota middle class family. His father made his career in the Colombian Air Force.

He began his professional path as an advisor to the then senator and today Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti.

When Benedetti became the strategist of Gustavo Petro's campaign in 2022, he took her with him.

Sarabia managed to become indispensable for the president during the campaign; So much so that once possessive, Petro appointed her head of the presidential office. That powerful role allowed him to handle the president's agenda and coordinate the ministers.

In that position, however, Sarabia had to resign as a result of the scandal that unleashed when Marelbys Meza, her son's nanny, revealed to the week magazine that she had allegedly subjected illegally, to a polygraph test inside the Nariño house (the headquarters of the Colombian presidency).

Meza said she was “kidnapped” to be questioned about the loss of US $ 7,000 in cash that were supposedly in Laura Sarabia's house.

The scandal worsened when the authorities confirmed that the nanny phone and another domestic employee of the official had been intercepted by members of the police, making them pass as collaborators of a criminal group.

“This government does not illegally intercept communications from magistrates, judges, journalists, opponents,” President Gustavo Petro wrote at the time, announcing the exit of Sarabia from the Government.

Two police officers have been convicted of interceptions to Sarabia's employees.

In the midst of the rage for the scandal, which was baptized by the local press as “nanny”, they also met some call audios between Armando Benedetti and Sarabia in which it insulted it and hinted that Petro's campaign had received illegal financing.

In April 2025, Sarabia denounced before the Prosecutor's Office to Benedetti, his former Chief and today Minister of the Interior, for facts related to verbal violence and gender violence.

“Who is Laura?” Beonically replied Benedetti to the local press about the complaints, an answer that reveals the strap relationship between those who for a long time were the two alfiles closest to President Petro.

Despite the huge reputational blow that was the scandal of his nanny for the government, Sarabia returned to the government three months later as director of Social Prosperity, an entity that is dedicated to fighting poverty and has a huge budget.

Less than six months later, Sarabia changed back, and reached the direction of the administrative department of the Presidency, one of the positions closest to the president.

A few months later, he finally jumped to the Foreign Ministry, a role that moved her away from the president, but gave her her own shine. This Friday, for example, it will be the one who opens the Colombian Embassy in Prague.

That Sarabia came to direct the coveted Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 30 years was a complete anomaly, according to some analysts, who pointed out that it is a position that people with a long political career, international experience and studies abroad, criteria that Sarabia did not fulfill.

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