Politics
Otto Perez, Ex-Guatemalan president jail 16 years for corruption
- Ex-Guatemalan president, Otto Perez gets 16 years for a grand-scale corruption
- Hist deputy Roxana Baldetti was also found guilty of leading a massive customs fraud scheme while in office.
Otto Perez, Ex-Guatemalan president has been jailed to 16 years imprisonment for corruption; the court, on Wednesday found him and his deputy, Roxana Baldetti guilty of leading a massive customs fraud scheme while in office.
Perez, who presided over Guatemala from 2012 to 2015, has been incarcerated for the past seven years while he waits for the outcome of the lawsuit. In a separate fraud case, Baldetti received a sentence of more than 15 years in jail in 2018.
Otto Perez, a 72-year-old retired general who took office promising to crack down on crime, was forced to resign with just four months left in his term amid protests over corruption scandals.
“All that’s left is to appeal,” Perez told reporters during a break in the trial, adding he felt “cheated” because the conviction was made “without a shred of proof.”
Otto Perez and Baldetti were accused of leading a customs fraud network that stole some $3.5 million in state funds during their administration, with both Perez and Baldetti accused by investigators of receiving hefty cuts.
A UN-backed anti-corruption body revealed several scandals in Guatemala before it was shut down in 2019 by then-president Jimmy Morales after it began investigating him.
One of its key successes was uncovering a multimillion-dollar scheme to cheat Guatemala’s customs duty system, which ultimately led to Perez’s resignation.
Those involved in the scheme — known as “La Linea” (The Line) — received bribes of some $3.5 million, according to investigators, who estimate that Guatemala was defrauded out of almost $10 million in tax revenue.
After the sentence was handed down Perez, 72, told reporters: “I truly feel frustrated, I feel disappointed.”
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He said he will appeal the ruling. Sixteen other people involved in the scam were convicted during the sentencing and 11 others were acquitted.
“The ‘La Linea’ case is one of the most symbolic and is a milestone in Guatemalan history,” Edie Cux, director of Transparency International’s local chapter, Citizen Action, told AFP.
“It is important that in some way the people of Guatemala have justice and that the case does not go unpunished,” she added.
Investigators had charged that the two led a scheme in which importers paid bribes to avoid paying customs duties. More than two dozen others have been charged in the case.
Otto Perez was ordered to pay 8.7 million quetzales ($1.10 million) while Baldetti was fined 8.4 million quetzales ($1.06 million) on Wednesday.
The case, known as “La Linea,” was originally investigated under the now-defunct International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), backed by the United Nations.
Guatemala expelled the head of the CICIG, Colombian Ivan Velasquez, in 2018 after his repeated attempts to investigate then-President Jimmy Morales and after jailing dozens of politicians and businessmen.
The next year, Morales let the mandate authorizing the CICIG’s operations expire, shuttering the commission. In 2021, Guatemalan investigators began to target judges, prosecutors, and journalists for having collaborated with the CICIG, forcing many into exile.
Since then, several of those implicated in corruption cases investigated by the CICIG have been freed and the CICIG’s findings have been annulled. Velasquez this year became Colombia’s minister of defense.