Former Guatemalan
President Portillo Is Charged in US
Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo
was charged in the United States with using
foreign banks to launder millions of dollars
plundered from charity and government
coffers.
Portillo, 58, is still being sought in
Guatemala, where he’s been the target of a
corruption investigation. A judge there
approved his extradition last week.
The disgraced politician is accused of
“converting the office of the Guatemalan
presidency into his personal ATM,” U.S.
Attorney Preet Bharara of New York said in a
statement.
An indictment unsealed in federal court in
Manhattan alleges the four-year scheme began
in 2000, when Portillo began embezzling $1.5
million in charitable donations from Taiwan
meant to buy school library books. It says
he endorsed checks drawn from a New York
bank and deposited them in a Miami bank
account; the money then was transferred to a
Paris bank account in the name of his former
wife and daughter.
In 2001, Portillo conspired with two members
of the Guatemalan military — an unnamed
colonel in charge of his security detail and
an intelligence officer — to embezzle
millions of dollars from the government,
U.S. prosecutors say. Some of the money was
used to buy expensive cars and watches, they
say.
Portillo served as president from 2000 to
2004 before fleeing to Mexico. He got a work
visa and began working as a financial
adviser for a construction materials company
there but was later extradited to Guatemala.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in
prison.
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