U.N. panel chief ordered out of Guatemala by president
GUATEMALA CITY — President Jimmy Morales announced Sunday that he was expelling the head of a U.N. anti-corruption commission investigating his campaign’s financing, only to have the order quickly blocked by Guatemala’s top court.
Morales’ move also drew criticism from the international community, including the United States, and at least two protests sprang up in the capital to decry the order.
A video posted on the government’s Twitter site early Sunday showed Morales declaring Ivan Velasquez persona non grata and ordering him to leave the country immediately. The president also announced he was firing Foreign Minister Carlos Raul Morales for not expelling Velasquez.
Morales said nothing of kicking out the entire commission of foreign experts, but the expulsion would leave its future unclear. The decade-old panel has worked with Guatemalan prosecutors to root out corruption and was key to bringing down former President Otto Perez Molina.
Within hours, Francisco de Mata Vela, head of Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, said that body had issued a temporary injunction blocking the order to expel Velasquez. The court will now analyze the case before reaching a definitive decision. It was not clear how long that would take.
Morales released another video at midafternoon affirming his decision to boot Velasquez.
Chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana, working with the U.N. commission, announced Friday that she was asking the Supreme Court to recommend stripping Morales of his immunity from prosecution in order to investigate financing of his 2015 campaign. If the court agrees, the decision on immunity would be made by Congress.
The prosecutor said Morales had refused to account for more than $800,000 in campaign financing and had hidden his own party’s accounts. Velasquez said at the joint news conference with Aldana that financing of some campaign expenditures could not be explained.
The embassies of international donor countries that support the U.N. commission — United States, Germany, Canada, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland as well as the European Union — issued a joint statement regretting Morales’ decision.