The socialist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said he will promote a law so that drug traffickers can continue to live in his country. The president said that it would be a project of national reconciliation and that it will be intended that criminals "have a way."

"A national reconciliation law will be made so that all those who have incurred violence can have a path, and to live in this Colombian nation, once you stop the mind, the brain and the ideas of killing the compatriot," Petro said during a speech in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba.

"To those drug traffickers we tell them that there is another way, that despite the insults I receive all day and every day, in which they call me crazy, where they think I am corrupt like them, I tell them, no. Drug traffickers also have a path here," he added.

Gustavo Petro and drug trafficking

Petro's remarks come at a time when he faces a scandal after his eldest son, Nicolás Petro, said under oath that his father's presidential campaign received money from drug trafficking.

Nicolás Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, was arrested along with his wife, according to the Colombian Prosecutor's Office. The son of the leftist president, and also a member of his political party in a regional government, faces charges of money laundering and illicit enrichment.

According to the accusations that surfaced at the time, Nicolas Petro allegedly received more than 1 billion Colombian pesos ($253,800) from criminals. Money that would have been poured into the campaign funds of his father, Gustavo Petro. The press also focused on the pace of life and heritage of Nicolás Petro, something they described as incompatible with his income as a politician in a regional parliament.