Remark
GUATEMALA CITY — The Guatemalan authorities’s effort to undo greater than a decade of United Nations-backed anti-corruption work moved even past its borders this week, in what specialists say is an election yr try and guarantee conservative voters its like received’t be seen once more.
Guatemalan prosecutors introduced their intention to pursue authorized motion towards Colombian Iván Velásquez, who led the U.N.’s anti-corruption mission in Guatemala. Velásquez, who’s now Colombia’s protection minister, and prosecutors the U.N. helped practice dealt blow after blow to Guatemalan corruption over 12 years till the federal government refused to resume their mandate in 2019.
Since then, the administration of President Alejandro Giammattei has been accused by civil society organizations and international governments of systemically pursuing those that labored with the U.N. mission, greatest identified by its Spanish preliminary CICIG.
Some 30 judges, magistrates and prosecutors concerned within the investigation or processing of these corruption circumstances have been compelled to flee the nation after dealing with authorized motion from the present administration.
Giammattei will not be eligible for re-election in June, however his Vamos occasion will put ahead a nationwide lawmaker as its candidate. The election guarantees to be a free-for-all with some 30 events collaborating. No Guatemalan occasion has ever been re-elected to the presidency for consecutive phrases.
“This suits with an electoral goal. It’s an oblique electoral providing for these sectors which are benefitting or are going to profit from the dismantling of every part that has to do with the CICIG,” mentioned Tiziano Breda, a Latin America knowledgeable with the Italy-based Istituto Affari Internazionali. “And it assures that within the case of the continuation of this authorities the dismantling will proceed.”
Maybe the CICIG’s biggest achievement was the investigation and prosecution of President Otto Pérez Molina, who was compelled to resign alongside together with his Cupboard in 2015.
Along with reversing the achievements made towards corruption, Breda mentioned, the present authorities’s marketing campaign towards these related to anti-corruption efforts “tries to alter the narrative about what CICIG got here to do within the nation and what it achieved.”
Guatemala’s present anti-corruption prosecutor, Rafael Curruchiche Cacul, alleges Velásquez improperly entered right into a cooperation settlement with Brazilian building big Odebrecht whereas investigating that agency’s in depth bribery operations throughout the area. That cooperation settlement was authorised by a Guatemalan choose.
Curruchiche Cacul was sanctioned by the US final yr for allegedly obstructing corruption investigations and pursuing as an alternative investigations towards former anti-corruption prosecutors and judges.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro defended Velásquez, saying the corrupt are actually pursuing him even years after he left Guatemala.
Farhan Haq, spokesman for U.N. Secretary Common António Guterres, mentioned Wednesday they had been conscious of the intention of Guatemalan prosecutors to take motion towards Velásquez and reiterated the immunity he and others retain.
“The Secretary-Common expresses his concern on the quite a few studies suggesting that felony prosecution is being exercised towards those that sought to make clear circumstances of corruption and labored to strengthen the justice system in Guatemala,” Haq mentioned.
Gabriela Carreta, a political scientist at Rafael Landivar College, mentioned the actions of Curruchiche Cacul goal to ship “a transparent message that by no means once more will there be investigations towards corruption, nor a seach for justice, a lot much less with international intervention.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/guatemala-ups-persecution-of-those-who-pursued-the-corrupt/2023/01/18/2a6ee00a-976e-11ed-a173-61e055ec24ef_story.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_world
