Guatemala expels UN anti-corruption chief

GUATEMALAN President Jimmy Morales is expelling the head of a UN anti-corruption commission that is investigating the president’s campaign financing.

A video posted yesterday on the government’s Twitter site showed Mr Morales declaring Ivan Velasquez “non grata” and ordering him to leave the country immediately.

The commission was created 10 years ago to fight corruption in the country and it has been key to prosecuting senior government figures, including past president Otto Perez Molina and former vice president Roxana Baldeta, who are both imprisoned.

The commission and prosecutors are now questioning the financing of Mr Morales’ 2015 campaign.

Mr Morales also announced he was firing foreign minister Carlos Raul Morales for failure to carry out the expulsion.

Chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana, working with the UN commission, announced on Friday that she was asking that the Supreme Court recommend stripping Mr Morales of his immunity from prosecution in order to investigate financing of his 2015 campaign, when he ran on the slogan “Neither corrupt nor a crook.”

If the court agrees, the decision on immunity would be made by Congress. The prosecutor said Mr Morales had refused to account for more than £600,000 in campaign financing and had hidden his own party’s accounts.

Mr Morales has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Some 2,500 people demonstrated in the capital Guatemala City on Saturday to demand Mr Morales resign.