Ex-president held in graft case
GUATEMALA CITY: Prosecutors said they have detained ex-President Alvaro Colom and nearly his entire former Cabinet, including the current chairman of Oxfam International, in a Guatemala corruption case involving a bus concession.
Mr Colom, who governed in 2008-2012, is the latest in a series of former Guatemalan presidents to face legal problems. He was recently named by the Organisation of American States as an envoy to Honduras in a bid to help sort out a highly disputed election there.
Mr Colom said after appearing making a court appearance that as far as he knows, the concession was handled properly.
Special prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval is looking into questionable purchases of public buses for Guatemala City. He said those arrested face charges of fraud and embezzlement.
Mr Sandoval said t he detentions included the former ministers of the interior, finance, defence, economy, education, labour, environment, health, sports and culture, and energy and mines. ExFinance Minister Alberto Fuentes Knight is the Oxfam chairman.
The global nonprofit said in a statement that it did not know the nature of formal charges against Mr Fuentes.
“However,” it said, “he has been entirely open with his Oxfam board and executive that he has been among former officials being investigated as part of a budgetary transaction made by the Guatemalan government while he was finance minister.”
A number of Guatemalan ex-presidents and other high-ranking officials have been swept in a series of corruption probes. They include a customs fraud scandal that allegedly sent kickbacks to then-president Otto Perez Molina and vice-president Roxana Baldetti, leading both to resign in 2015. Alfonso Portillo, Guatemala’s president in 2000-2004, was extradited to the US and pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2014.