Sabas Pretelt de la Vega

Sabas Pretelt de la Vega was the Colombian minister of the Interior and Justice between November 2003 and September 2006. Mr. Pretelt de la Vega was a member of President Álvaro Uribe's cabinet as Minister of Interior and Justice, being the first non-lawyer to occupy that position. He is credited for bringing significant legislative achievements to effectively improve the fight against drug trafficking and the country's stability. During this tenure as Minister, he served several times as Minister in charge of the presidential office. His successor is Carlos Holguín Sardi, since 2006.

Prior to being a member of Álvaro Uribe's cabinet, Sabas Pretelt was between 1988 and 2003 the president of FENALCO, the Colombian National Association of Commerce. Mr Pretelt had a successful career in the private sector, both as entrepreneur and President of the National Council of Entrepreneurs, a coordinating body of all the private sector organizations in Colombia. In that quality, he also represented several times Colombia's employers in the Assembly of the International Labour Organisation and in other regional organizations such as ALAS, the Latin American Association of Supermarkets and the Food Marketing Institute of the United States, among others.

Sabas Pretelt de la Vega (born April 11, 1946) is a Colombian economist and businessman, who served as Colombian Minister of the Interior and Justice, and Ambassador to the Colombian missions in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, San Marino, and Malta. He was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison in April 2015 for corruption after the Yidispolitica scandal where Yidis Medina supposedly took a bribe from Pretelt. He was released in April 2018 under good behaviour, in which he set up an education system for the soldiers in the naval base he was detained in.

Sabas Pratelt de la Vega was born in Cartagena de Indias in the Department of Bolívar, Colombia on April 11, 1946. He had three children with his ex-wife Pilar Arango Gomez: María Vanessa, Verónica, and Mauricio. Pretelt married fellow Colombian economist Ana Luisa de Zubiría on September 11, 2006, the private ceremony took place in the home of his sister Mercé Pretelt de la Vega, and the godparents were President of Fedegán José Félix Lafaurie and the Attorney General of Colombia Mario Germán Iguarán Arana, the nuptials were hastened due to Pretelt's diplomatic appointment in Italy and left that same day to Rome.