A court found former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina and former Vice President Roxana Baldetti guilty of illicit association and fraud. The case was one of the most emblematic of the extinct United Nations commission against impunity in Guatemala and forced Pérez Molina to resign from office in 2015 before the end of his term. He has been in prison ever since.
The former president was facing three charges for the crimes of illicit association, customs fraud and illicit enrichment. The court acquitted Pérez Molina and the former vice president for the latter, alluding that the prosecution had not proven how the defendants’ assets increased.
The sentence that will be imposed for the two crimes has not yet been announced.
“Is a lie. No one ever says that I have given an illegal order and I never did, they never say that they gave me money. I feel disappointed and frustrated,” Pérez Molina told reporters during a break in the judicial hearing against him for corruption.
The case, called “La línea”, was a joint investigation by the then Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Corruption (FECI) and the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).
It is a structure that defrauded the State through three customs offices and that, according to the investigators, gave “discounts” to importers so that they would pay less taxes in exchange for bribes.
Pérez Molina, 72, as well as the almost 30 defendants have said that they are innocent of the charges of illicit association, tax fraud and illicit enrichment that they are accused of.
In an intermission of the hearing, he told journalists that it is going to be proven that they would have fabricated a case for him. “I am innocent,” she said. When questioned about his future, he mentioned that he has not yet resolved his legal problems as there are other pending cases.
During the hearing that has already started for more than six hours, the court of judges Janeth Valdés, Katty Sarceño and Marling Gonzálezyo has already acquitted seven of the defendants, while reading the accusations of each of the defendants.
In April 2015, thousands of Guatemalan citizens took to the streets to protest in outrage at alleged acts of corruption involving the entire cabinet. Peaceful protests led to the resignation of officials.
In May of that year, Vice President Roxana Baldetti was the first to resign from office in the “La Línea” case, for which she is accused. The former official has been convicted of other corruption cases and the United States has requested her extradition to try her for alleged drug trafficking.
On September 2, in his third year of government, Pérez Molina resigned along with his cabinet.
The Prosecutor’s Office had provided not only documentary evidence of the fraud but also testimonies from protected witnesses, effective collaborators and wiretaps in which they spoke of the distribution of the defrauded.
In raids ordered by the Prosecutor’s Office, computers were seized that contained distribution tables of the defrauded and that was partly delivered to Pérez Molina and Baldetti.
Pérez Molina has been in prison since 2015, with some exceptions and permission to leave. The ruling was delayed by the large number of people who are part of the process and who have submitted petitions to the courts.
The former president is also accused in two other corruption cases that have not yet reached trial.
The CICIG was an entity of the United Nations that for 12 years dismantled more than 60 organized crime structures and clandestine security apparatuses embedded in the Guatemalan State and came to an end in 2019 after the decision of then-President Jimmy Morales not to renew his mandate.
After the CICIG’s departure from Guatemala, a large number of the cases it investigated were reversed and those accused of corruption were released or freed from charges. The prosecutor who led the investigations, Juan Francisco Sandoval, had to go into exile after denouncing persecution for his work against corruption.
