June 11, 2016
Guatemala’s attorney general on Saturday brought corruption charges against five former ministers who served in the government of Otto Perez, a former president impeached and arrested for suspected graft last year. The five are accused of money laundering and unlawful association to buy gifts for Perez and ex-vice president Roxana Baldetti through an aide, said Ivan Velasquez, head of a local U.N.-backed anti-corruption body known as the CICIG.
The announcement was made in a joint news conference by Guatemala’s attorney general, Thelma Aldana, and the CICIG, who worked together to build a case against Perez last year. Velasquez said the five had channeled some $4.5 million in cash to Baldetti’s private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzon, to buy beach houses for Baldetti and Perez, as well as a helicopter and a boat for the former president, a retired general. Velasquez said investigators suspect that the money delivered to Monzon for the gifts was illicit because the sums involved went far beyond the ministers’ salaries or what they had stated in their asset declarations.