GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – Guatemala’s central bank governor was arrested yesterday in a bribery probe that also targeted a former aide of President Otto Perez, who has faced mounting pressure since his vice president quit two weeks ago over a separate graft scandal.
The Guatemalan attorney general’s office said it had arrested central bank chief Julio Suarez, and issued an arrest warrant for Juan de Dios Rodriguez, Perez’s former personal secretary and head of the Guatemalan Social Security Institute.
The office said Suarez, who has a seat on the institute’s board, had been arrested along with 14 others over a $14.5 million medical services contract awarded by the institute. The charges include fraud, influence trafficking and charging illegal commission, prosecutors said.
Ivan Velasquez of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a United Nations-backed group working with prosecutor’s on the case, said investigations that began last year found that the contract was rigged in favor of a pharmaceutical company.
“We have very coherent evidence to show that the members of the tendering board took illegal steps,” Velasquez said.
According to the investigators, taped phone conversations showed that the company, identified by the prosecutor’s office as the Guatemalan unit of Mexico’s Pisa, paid bribes to officials from the institute to win a dialysis contract.
A Pisa spokesman declined to comment.
