BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The chief strategist of President Juan Manuel Santos’ re-election campaign has resigned amid allegations that he took $12 million from some of Colombia’s top drug lords in exchange for helping negotiate their surrender.

Appearing three weeks before the election, the allegations against J.J. Rendon were published over the weekend by the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and newsmagazine Semana. The reports cited testimony from a U.S. jail by Javier Antonio Calle, who was one of the country’s most-hunted drug traffickers until he turned himself into the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2012.