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GUATEMALA-POLITICS-CORRUPTION-COURT
Former Guatemalan vice president jailed for corruption
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A court in Guatemala City on
Tuesday sentenced former vice president Roxana Baldetti to 15 years in prison
for corruption after a trial lasting four months.
Prosecutors said that between 2014 and 2015, a group of officials and
business executives directed by Baldetti embezzled around $2.5 million from
the poor Central American country’s public coffers.
The money was part of an $18 million state fund for anti-pollution
treatment at Lake Amatitlan, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the capital
Guatemala City.
Baldetti “participated in and directed” the criminal network to “defraud
the state of Guatemala,” said Judge Pablo Xitumul, delivering the sentence.
He sentenced Baldetti to 15 years and six months in prison for criminal
association, influence trafficking and corruption.
Nine other people — former officials or business executives — received
jail sentences of between three and 15 years for their part in the fraud.
Baldetti faces trial in three other corruption cases.
Baldetti — the first woman to serve as vice president of Guatemala — was
deputy to president Otto Perez from 2012-2015.
Both Perez and Baldetti have been held in preventive detention since 2015
after being forced to step down in a welter of corruption scandals. They are
alleged to be the lynchpins in a corruption network dubbed “La Linea” in
which they allegedly received kickbacks from business leaders in exchange for
lowering import taxes.
After Perez was forced to step down, Jimmy Morales — a TV comedian with no
political experience — was elected president after running for office on an
anti-corruption ticket.
Morales himself is being investigated for suspected illegal campaign
financing. However, he is currently protected by presidential immunity, after
parliament in September voted against lifting it.
The immunity waiver was requested in August by the public prosecutor’s
office and a UN-backed anti-impunity commission set up to investigate state
corruption.
BSS/AFP/MRI/2326 HRS