Companies operating at the airport in Madrid refused to refuel the plane carrying Colombian President Gustavo Petro to Saudi Arabia because the president was included on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list, known as the 'Clinton List'. Local media such as the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo reported this on Wednesday. According to the newspaper, some of the companies providing these services have American capital and declined to supply fuel to the Colombian presidential plane for fear of 'incurring serious violations of OFAC regulations'. Petro, for his part, on Tuesday, before the fuel issue became known, thanked 'the Kingdom of Spain for helping me get' to where he was invited, without giving further details. In this regard, El Tiempo noted that the Colombian presidential plane was moved to a military base where it was refueled and continued on its way to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced last Friday the inclusion of Petro; his wife, Verónica Alcocer; his son Nicolás Petro, and Colombia's Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, on the OFAC list for alleged ties to drug trafficking. This implies the blocking of their assets in the U.S. However, Petro assured last week that he does not own property or accounts in the United States and therefore the financial sanctions imposed by the Trump administration do not affect him. Tensions between Bogotá and Washington intensified in September when the U.S. removed Colombia—considered the world's largest producer of cocaine—from the list of nations cooperating in the fight against drug trafficking. Also in September, the U.S. revoked the visa of the Colombian president after his participation in a pro-Palestinian event in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
