Guatemala: Supreme Court approves impeachment of President Molina

Last Tuesday, the Guatemalan Supreme Court approved a request by the country’s attorney general to impeach President Otto Perez Molina over his suspected involvement in a corruption scandal known as La Linea.

The case is now in the hands of the congress, which will decide whether to take off the President of immunity from prosecution, a legal benefit given to some elected officials in Guatemala.

According to the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office and the UN International Commission against Impunity  in Guatemala (CICIG), President Molina together with a group of close aides within his administration received bribes in exchange for lowering taxes for companies seeking to import products into the country. The former vice-president of Guatemala, Roxana Baldetti, arrested on corruption charges three months after she was forced to leave office, is involved too.

The UN Commission’s aim, set up on December 2006,  is to support the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Civilian Police and other state institutions in the investigation of a limited number of sensitive and difficult cases. The ultimate goal is that through CICIG’s work, national judicial sector institutions will be strengthened to continue to confront illegal groups and organized crime in the future.

In a message broadcast Sunday on Guatemalan national TV and radio, the President denied the charges and suggested that he is the target of a plot by his political enemies aided by foreign interests. “I categorically deny and reject the accusation that I was involved (in a corruption scheme) and having received any money from that customs fraud scheme,” he said.

Thousands of protesters meet every saturday in Constitution Square, outside Guatemala City’s National Palace, demanding an end to corruption and the resignation of President, only few days before general elections, that will be held on September, 6. Perez Molina will be not eligible due to constitutional term limits.