GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Police have detained Guatemala’s former defense minister on charges of abuse of authority and illicit enrichment. He’s accused of approving inappropriate bonus payments for himself and President Jimmy Morales.

Former Defense Minister Williams Mansilla allegedly granted bonuses to himself and other officers and sent $61,000 to Morales.

Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled in October against a request by prosecutors to strip Morales of his immunity in the case.

The court ruled the federal controller had already sanctioned Morales by making him return the money and that he could not be sanctioned twice. </s> GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A former Guatemalan general was arrested on corruption charges relating to a special bonus paid to President Jimmy Morales by the defense ministry, prosecutors said on Friday.

William Mansilla, who was minister of defense, left the government in September 2017 just after the payment came to light.

Since December 2016, the defense department paid President Morales around $7,300 a month, on top of his regular salary, in what was called a “Bonus for Extraordinary Responsibility.”

Former comedian Morales, who came to power on an anti-corruption platform, has been under pressure amid allegations that include illegal election campaign financing.

Guatemala’s federal prosecutors and the United Nations-backed commission against impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) had pushed to revoke immunity for Morales after his salary bonus became known.

Morales denied that the payment was illegal but later returned some $60,000.

Mansilla was arrested on charges of abuse of authority, illegal enrichment and embezzlement, prosecutors said Friday.

“In time, I will be able to give evidence and confront the legal cases that are coming,” Mansilla told journalists as he walked into the courtroom.

Guatemala’s government did not respond to requests for comment on the case. </s> GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced Sunday he is expelling the head of a U.N. anti-corruption commission that is investigating the president’s campaign financing.

A video posted on the government’s Twitter site showed Morales declaring Ivan Velasquez “non grata” and ordering him to leave the country immediately. He also announced he was firing Foreign Minister Carlos Raul Morales for failure to carry out the expulsion.

Velasquez heads a 10-year-old commission of experts that has worked with Guatemalan prosecutors to root out corruption in the country. It was key to bringing down former President Otto Perez Molina, who was forced to resign in 2015 and remains in prison.

Chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana, working with the U.N. commission, announced on Friday that she was asking the Supreme Court recommend stripping Morales of his immunity from prosecution in order to investigate financing of his 2015 campaign, when he ran on the slogan “Neither corrupt nor a crook.” If the court agrees, the decision on immunity would be made by Congress.

The prosecutor said Morales had refused to account for more than $800,000 in campaign financing and had hidden his own party’s accounts.

Some 2,500 people demonstrated in the capital on Saturday to demand Morales resign. </s> GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti was sentenced to 15-1/2 years in prison on Tuesday for fraud, influence peddling and illicit association related to a government contract to clean up a polluted lake, in the first of several cases she faces.

A panel of judges had charged Baldetti, 56, who has been in prison since 2015, for her role in the contract for chemicals to clean up Lake Amatitlan, around 16 miles (25 kms) south of Guatemala City.

The $17.8 million contract was awarded to M. Tarcic Engineering, an Israeli firm, but after $2 million was paid, investigators realized the money had been transferred to bank accounts of shell companies, and individuals who were later accused of fraud, prosecutors said.

Investigators discovered that the chemicals were essentially water with salt, leading to the case being nicknamed, “Magic Water.”

Baldetti “issued instructions to place key people to execute the budget in favor of the criminal organization (and) facilitated the administrative and financial procedures for the company,” said Pablo Xitumul, one of the three judges who sentenced the former vice president.

In 2015, both Baldetti and President Otto Perez resigned and were jailed over corruption scandals that gutted his government, sparked mass protests and plunged the country into a political crisis days before a presidential election.

Baldetti, who was vice president for three years, faces separate accusations of leading a network to defraud the state related to customs, alongside Perez, who is also awaiting trial.

She also faces corruption charges and an extradition request from the United States on drug trafficking charges.

The U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala that helped bring her down is now facing its own crisis, after President Jimmy Morales decided not to renew its mandate. </s> Former Guatemalan Vice President Roxana Baldetti was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison Tuesday for involvement in a fraudulent state contract to decontaminate a major lake.

Prosecutors backed by a U.N. anti-corruption commission accused Baldetti and 12 other people of conspiring to grant an $18 million contract to clean up Lake Amatitlan to Israel-based M. Tarcic Engineering Ltd.

The company said it had a special formula that could clean the lake within months. But investigators determined the company used a substance that was merely water, salt and chlorine.

Judge Pablo Xitumul read the 15 year and 6 month sentence on the 55-year-old Baldetti for illegal association, fraud and influence trafficking. He called her "the big chief" of the plan.

The Israeli company's representative, Uri Roitman, was sentenced to 11 years for fraud and illegal association.

Baldetti has consistently denied wrongdoing. She resigned from the vice presidency in 2015 while facing corruption charges in a separate case. Former President Otto Perez Molina was forced to step down shortly afterward and remains in jail awaiting trial.

Baldetti also faces drug trafficking charges in the United States. A Guatemalan court last year approved a request to extradite her after several cases in Guatemala are resolved. The U.S. federal court indictment alleges Baldetti and others conspired to traffic cocaine to the U.S. between 2010 and 2015.

The sentence is an example of how the U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission has been able to help prosecutors reach the previously untouchable upper echelons of Guatemalan power.

President Jimmy Morales last month railed against the commission during a speech at the United Nations and has banned the commission's chief, Ivan Velasquez, from re-entering the country.

Morales had earlier announced that the commission would not have its mission extended beyond its current mandate that ends in September 2019.

Guatemalan prosecutors with the commission's support have three times sought to have Morales stripped of his immunity so that he can be investigated for alleged illicit campaign finance. </s> Guatemala’s fight against corruption has intensified with the arrest of a former president and nine of his ex-ministers.

Alvaro Colom and members of his former cabinet are suspected of having embezzled funds and committed fraud while helping set up a public bus system in Guatemala City in 2010.

Ivan Velasquez, head of Guatemala’s international commission against impunity (CICIG), said on Tuesday: “[Colom] intervened personally and institutionally to facilitate the fraudulent procedure of creating the agreement.”

Prosecutors said there are questions around how the government auctioned off concessions and granted subsidies for the buses.

The current chairman of Oxfam International and former Guatemalan finance minister Juan Alberto Fuentes was among those arrested.

Fuentes detention comes as Oxfam is already reeling from a sexual abuse scandal in Haiti and elsewhere.

Guatemala is no stranger to corruption scandals. Over the past decade, international investigators have been working with local prosecutors to peel back the layers of corruption that plague the small Central American country.

He is now on trial, accused of stealing millions of dollars from the country’s customs offices.

Current president, Jimmy Morales, tried to kick out Velasquez after he pushed to remove Morales’ immunity to face prosecution in another corruption investigation.

Analysts say these political arrests are far from over.

“I think the CICIG and the Attorney General’s office are just scratching the surface of this issue,” said Arturo Matute of the International Crisis Group.

“Without a doubt there are many more investigations under way which will take years to uncover.”

The upcoming selection of a new attorney general will be pivotal if these investigations are to continue.

Experts say Guatemalans need to be vigilant to ensure the country’s next top prosecutor has their interests at heart, and not those of the political elite. </s> Prosecutors in Guatemala are seeking to have presidential candidate Sandra Torres Casanova's immunity from prosecution withdrawn over a case of alleged illicit campaign financing.

Prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval says the request springs from an investigation with a U.N.-sponsored anti-corruption commission that President Jimmy Morales has moved to sideline.

Sandoval says Torres' National Unity of Hope party is suspected of receiving financing from businesses that hid their contributions. He says prosecutors are looking into alleged crimes of illicit association, perjury, illicit and unreported electoral financing and tax fraud.

At a Wednesday news conference, Torres called it a political attack and denounced what she called "dark political intentions."

Torres was accredited as a candidate Tuesday, a status that confers legal immunity. It is her second time running for the presidency. </s> Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A Guatemalan court has sentenced former Vice President Roxana Baldetti to 15 and-a-half years in prison for a multi-million dollar fraud scheme.

The court also sentenced nine others Tuesday in connection with the plot.

Prosecutors with the International Commission Against Impunity found Baldetti ran a criminal network that conspired to give an $18 million government contract to an Israeli company for a "magic water" product to clean up Lake Amatitlan in Guatemala.

The product was a mix of saltwater and chlorine that wasn't effective at decontaminating the water, prosecutors said.

Baldetti's sentence includes eight years for illicit association, five years for fraud and 30 months for influence peddling, the commission said.

Among the nine others sentenced is Baldetti's brother Mario, who coordinated and facilitated the contract given to M. Tarcic Engineering for the lake cleanup. He was given 11 years. Other included people involved with state institutions in the environmental field and company representatives. Their sentences ranged from three to 13 years.

Baldetti was forced to resign in 2015 after a separate corruption investigation brought down the government of President Otto Perez Meline, who's in jail awaiting trial. She also faces other charges and an extradition request from the United States on drug trafficking charges, which she has denied.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, elected in 2015, faces his own charges of illegal campaign financing and fraud and has decided to end the anti-corruption commission's mandate next September.

Commission chief Ivan Velasquez, who Morales blocked from re-entering Guatemala, applauded the sentences.

"The fight against corruption and impunity IS possible!" he tweeted. </s> Prosecutors in Guatemala have detained ex-president Alvaro Colom and almost his entire former cabinet in a corruption case involving a bus contract.

Prosecutors in Guatemala have detained ex-president Alvaro Colom and almost his entire former cabinet in a corruption case involving a bus contract.

Colom, who governed from 2008 to 2012, is the latest in a series of former presidents to face legal problems.

He was recently named by the Organisation of American States as an envoy to Honduras, in a bid to help sort out disputed elections there. Special prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, who said Colom was arrested on Tuesday, is looking into the questionable purchases of public buses for Guatemala City.

Mr Sandoval said the detentions included the ex-interior minister and the former ministers of finance, defence, economy, education, labour, environment, health and sports and culture. The case centres around a public bus company known as Transurbano.

The government auctioned off 25-year concessions for Guatemala City bus routes and the private companies that won the contracts were later exempted from taxes. Prosecutors say the process was deeply flawed and included subsidies and other measures that benefited public servants.

A customs fraud scandal that allegedly sent kickbacks to then-president Otto Perez Molina and vice president Roxana Baldetti led both to resign in 2015. They have been jailed awaiting trial but more than 100 defence filings have delayed the trial.

Alfonso Portillo, Guatemala’s president from 2000 to 2004, was extradited to the US and pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy in 2014.

He admitted accepting $2.5 million in bribes from the government of Taiwan to continue to recognise the Asian nation diplomatically.
Former Defense Minister of Guatemala Williams Mansilla is arrested for a possible corruption case associated with a bond to President Jimmy Morales. The Attorney General asked the Supreme Court to consider again the impeachment against President Morales.