Trial against president’s brother, son starts

GUATEMALA CITY: A fraud trial against the brother and son of Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales began on Wednesday amid a scandal touched off by the president’s attempt to expel the leader of a UN-backed anti-corruption unit investigating the case.

Guatemala’s top tribunal, the Constitutional Court, ruled definitively on Tuesday against Mr Morales’ internationally criticised push to expel from the country Ivan Velasquez, the Colombian who leads the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).

The CICIG and the prosecutor’s office accuse Samuel “Sammy” Morales, the president’s brother and one of his closest advisers, and Jose Manuel Morales, one of the leader’s four sons, of facilitating false receipts that defrauded the national property registry in 2013, two years before Mr Morales was elected. They deny any wrongdoing.

Neither of the two gave a declaration before a judge on Wednesday, where they appeared together with another 20 other defendants.

The scandal has hurt the popularity of Jimmy Morales, a former comedian, who was elected in late 2015 after riding a wave of public discontent over the corruption scandals that brought down his predecessor Otto Perez Molina.

The president has said the investigation into his family was not related to his controversial decision to declare Mr Velasquez “persona non grata”. Last week, Mr Velasquez and Guatemalan AttorneyGeneral Thelma Aldana asked to remove Mr Morales’ immunity, in order to investigate him for accusations of illegal campaign financing.

The case involves payments linked to the mother of Jose Manuel Morales’ thengirlfriend in 2013. She allegedly sent the national property registry a US$12,000 (398,300 baht) bill made out in the name of a local restaurant for 564 breakfasts, according to the attorney-general. The breakfasts were never delivered.

Samuel Morales recognised the acts as a “favour” to his nephew, but he denied that he had benefited or been implicated in the network of fraud that deprived the institution of thousands of dollars. Both were detained in January, then put under house arrest.