initiate the appropriate investigations and impose the appropriate sanctions in accordance 4 with the law. Article 278. The General Prosecutor of the Nation will exercise the following functions directly: 1. Discharge from office, following a hearing and on the basis of justified reasons, any public officials who are guilty of any of the following deficiencies: violating the Constitution or the laws in an obvious manner; deriving obvious and profitable material advantage from the exercise of their duties or functions; impeding in serious manner investigations carried out by the Office of the Public Prosecutor or by an administrative or juridical authority; performing with obvious carelessness the investigation and sanctioning of the disciplinary deficiencies of employees under their authority or in the denunciation of punishable 5 occurrences that they have cognizance of by virtue of exercising their office. 2. The Single Disciplinary Code 42. The Single Disciplinary Code, Law 734 of 2002, states the following: Article 3 — Preferential disciplinary power. The preferential exercise of the disciplinary power has been vested to the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation, pursuant of which it can start, follow or remit any investigation or judgment of competence of the public entities’ internal disciplinary control bodies. Likewise, it may assume the proceedings in the second instance. (…) Article 44 — Types of sanctions. The public servant is subject to the following sanctions: 1. Dismissal and general disqualification, for very serious offenses committed with extremely gross negligence. 2. Suspension in the exercise of the position and special disqualification for the serious offenses committed with willful misconduct or extremely gross negligence. 3. Suspension, for the serious offenses committed with gross negligence. 4. Fine, for the minor offenses committed with willful misconduct. 5. Written admonishment, for the minor offenses committed by negligence. Paragraph. There will be extremely gross negligence when the disciplinary offense is incurred by ignorance, elementary lack of attention or manifest violation of binding rules. There will be gross negligence when the disciplinary offense is committed due to the lack of necessary care that any ordinary person observes in its acts. Article 45 — Definition of the sanctions. 1. The dismissal and general disqualification implies: a) The termination of the relation of the public servant with the administration, whether or not it is of free appointment and removal, of career or election, or b) The removal from office, in the cases established in articles 110 and 278, subsection l, of the National Constitution, or c) The termination of the employment contract, and 4 Colombia’s Political Constitution. 5 Colombia’s Political Constitution. 6