Colombian president’s strip membership humiliation: Bank statements launched to disclaim Trump’s cash laundering accusations reveal embarrassing secret
Colombia’s President found himself at the centre of an extraordinary scandal after official spending records revealed a $50 charge at a Lisbon strip club during a state visit.
Gustavo Petro, already under fire after Washington DC labelled him a drug trafficker and froze his accounts by placing him on the notorious Clinton List, ordered the release of his own financial records in a bold attempt to prove his innocence to the US President.
But the move spectacularly backfired. Among pages of luxury purchases – including Gucci and Prada – a $50 (£35) tab stood out.
It was paid in May 2023 at the sultry Ménage Strip Club in Lisbon’s nightlife district of Cais do Sodré.
On Wednesday, Petro tried to explain away the club visit with a philosophical flourish on social media, posting: ‘There are two things I’ve learned in life: not to sleep with a woman who doesn’t make anything blossom in my heart, and not to buy sex when I’m still capable of seduction and poetry.
‘Sexuality should always be combined with culture – that’s called eroticism’.
The President insisted he had not attempted to hide anything and hinted that the full story would emerge one day.
‘Someday’, he vowed, he would explain why he spent ’40 euros at that place.’
Gustavo Petro, already under fire after Washington DC labelled him a drug trafficker and froze his accounts by placing him on the notorious Clinton List, ordered the release of his own financial records in a bold attempt to prove his innocence to the US President
A $50 tab was paid in May 2023 at the sultry Ménage Strip Club in Lisbon’s nightlife district of Cais do Sodré (pictured)
For now, he insisted the real issue was US ‘arbitrariness’ toward Colombia, blasting the decision to remove the Andean nation from the list of those doing enough to combat drug trafficking.
‘For now, I am interested in ensuring that all those who analyze my accounts can see the type of arbitrary action taken against Colombia, in downgrading it, and against its President,’ he wrote on X.
Then came a second, defiant declaration: ‘I don’t need to buy sex, I don’t like it. I still have some seductive ability that allows me to avoid resorting to those practices of sad men’.
This is not the first time Petro has waded into sexual territory.
During a live-broadcast Cabinet meeting last September, he stunned viewers with another bold proclamation: ‘A free woman does what she wants with her clitoris and her brain, and if she knows how to balance the two, she will be a great woman’.
It comes after a second controversy arose this week, following allegations around the luxurious lifestyle of the Columbian first lady, Veronica Alcocer.
Petro responded that she ‘does not spend a single peso of Colombian public funds and has rights and freedoms,’ and criticised Trump’s ‘rudeness’ towards Alcocer for also including her on the ‘Clinton List.’
The Colombian President went on to explain that the pair separated ‘years ago’ which reignited doubts and questions over her status as first lady.
