The Guatemalan President, Otto Pérez Molina, resigned just after midnight this Thursday September 3, after the Guatemalan parliament disposed him of his immunity earlier this week, and a warrant for his arrest was issued on Wednesday. Pérez Molinas position had been under pressure for several months as evidence regarding his involvement in large scale embezzlement piled up. His vice-president Roxana Baldetti had already been forced to resign in May, because of her role in the same criminal network used to defraud the state. This network–known as La Línea facilitated tax evasion by the country’s economic elites in exchange for bribes and defrauded the Guatemalan state of millions of dollars. La Línea has implicated dozens of officials in the highest levels of government, including the acting and former heads of Guatemala’s tax collection agency, and reaching up to the President himself.
Search