Ex-Guatemala vice president sentenced to 15-1/2 yrs in prison
OCTOBER 9, 2018 / 7:03 AM / 6 DAYS AGO
Ex-Guatemala vice president sentenced to 15-1/2 yrs in prison
Sofia Menchu
2 MIN READ
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti was sentenced to 15-1/2 years in prison on Tuesday for fraud, influence peddling and illicit association related to a government contract to clean up a polluted lake, in the first of several cases she faces.
A panel of judges had charged Baldetti, 56, who has been in prison since 2015, for her role in the contract for chemicals to clean up Lake Amatitlan, around 16 miles (25 kms) south of Guatemala City.
The $17.8 million contract was awarded to M. Tarcic Engineering, an Israeli firm, but after $2 million was paid, investigators realized the money had been transferred to bank accounts of shell companies, and individuals who were later accused of fraud, prosecutors said.
. . .
Baldetti “issued instructions to place key people to execute the budget in favor of the criminal organization (and) facilitated the administrative and financial procedures for the company,” said Pablo Xitumul, one of the three judges who sentenced the former vice president.
In 2015, both Baldetti and President Otto Perez resigned and were jailed over corruption scandals that gutted his government, sparked mass protests and plunged the country into a political crisis days before a presidential election.
More:
https://in.reuters.com/article/guatemala-corruption/ex-guatemala-vice-president-sentenced-to-15-1-2-yrs-in-prison-idINKCN1MJ1DI?rpc=401&
~ ~ ~
(You may recall that even before her boss, President Otto Perez, was elected, he was publicly named as being a military figure involved in atrocities against humanity, leading vicious government death squads against indigenous villagers during their war on the poor. He served for a while under the presidency of vicious fundamentalist Christian evangelical, and personal friend of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, offering the poorest of the poor, the indigenous people, a choice: ''fusiles y frijoles'' - ''bullets and beans.'' If they didn't bow to his demands, his agents would kill them.
Guatemala, and all the other countries teeming with desperately poor people ARE GOING TO BE FREE, in time. It is absolutely inevitable. It takes so long because those who prey upon the cheap labor and helplessness of the very poor also control the economy and the military which will clearly murder them when it is desirable by the leaders.)
