Former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez (2012-2015) was released on conditional bail after eight years in prison after paying bail for two convicting sentences for corruption cases during his administration, his defender reported on Thursday.
“Having satisfied the two economic bail bonds and substitute measures, he obtained his freedom last night,” said attorney César Calderón, who handled both cases where he was convicted.
The litigator explained that the bail set at around $1.2 million for the first case in which he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2022 was able to be paid by guaranteeing two real estate properties of his relatives.
In the other case in which he was sentenced to 8 years in prison last September, they had already paid around $40,000 in fines. In both cases different judges granted him substitute measures to leave prison.
Pérez was released on conditional bail and prohibited from leaving the country. In the first trial called ‘La Línea’ Pérez was sentenced for million-dollar customs fraud, while in the second known as “Co-optation of the State” he was convicted for the looting of public funds.
Pérez, a 73-year-old retired general, resigned months before handing over power and was jailed on September 3, 2015 after massive protests.
Happy
The former president now “has no pending cases and fortunately is in very good health and very happy to be back with his family,” he added.
“Every detained person desires what he desires, to be with his family, children, grandchildren, wife and everything else. He is doing well at home with his family,” he insisted. He also commented that Pérez, now free, will be able to receive better medical care due to a heart problem.
For Calderón, the former ruler “will find it much easier to be free than before when a thousand things had to be done to allow the doctor to enter the jail with equipment.” “It was extremely complicated, now those issues that benefit his life and health are facilitated,” he said.
The local Prosecutor’s Office uncovered the corruption cases with the support of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a United Nations body that supported the fight against criminal structures within the State between 2007 and 2019.
The then head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI), Juan Francisco Sandoval, led the investigation and is considered a “champion against corruption” by the United States, but now he is exiled in that country after being removed from office by the attorney general, Consuelo Porras.
Sandoval was sidelined in 2021 when he tried to investigate outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei (January 2020-January 2024) for alleged acts of corruption.
For analysts, the oral and public trial against senior officials accused of corruption breaks the mold and sets “a milestone in the judicial history” of this Central American nation.
