Word: guatemala
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...Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney in Manhattan, says Portillo turned "the Guatemalan presidency into his personal ATM." Guatemalan media, quoting Guatemalan government sources, have reported that Portillo's alleged take was approximately $70 million. Aside from the Taiwanese funds, he's also accused of embezzling about $4 million from Guatemala's Defense Ministry. He allegedly laundered the money through accounts in Guatemala and through U.S. and European banks. It was a financial shell game that involved overdrafts so massive, say authorities, that two Guatemalan banks are now insolvent and the country's only state-run mortgage bank is teetering...
...Taiwan case, according to the U.S. indictment, Portillo took three checks in 2000 from the Taiwanese government that were earmarked for Guatemala's Libraries for Peace program and deposited them in an account at Hamilton Bank in Miami that was held by a political supporter and friend. He then allegedly wired a chunk of it to an account at Washington-based Riggs Bank and later to a Paris bank account jointly held by his daughter and ex-wife. Portillo was indicted in New York City because some of the banks and branches he allegedly used were located there...
Portillo faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted. Under the judges' Wednesday order, he could be tried first in Guatemala on related embezzlement and laundering charges. He had originally been extradited to Guatemala in 2008 from Mexico, where he had gone to live after leaving office under a cloud of suspicion. Until January he had been free on bond in Guatemala, awaiting trial there. When the U.S. indictment was announced in January, he tried to go underground but was arrested by Guatemalan police backed by U.S. officials as well the U.N.'s Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala...
CICIG's presence is an indication of how dysfunctional police and judicial institutions are in Guatemala, where an astonishing 96.5% of crimes are never solved. The country's murder rate is eight times that of the U.S. - a plague that was underscored on Wednesday when Portillo's extradition hearing was delayed because the judges had received telephoned death threats. Crime watchers say Portillo, elected in 1999 from the conservative Guatemalan Republican Front Party, presided over much of the deterioration of law and order despite his anti-corruption pledges. "Portillo was the person in charge of weakening the national police," says...
...uglier ironies of Portillo's case is that he was elected in 1999 largely by promising to stand up for Guatemala's poor, especially its majority indigenous Maya. To have allegedly pinched millions in foreign aid intended for low-income students' textbooks - in a country that has Central America's lowest literacy rate - seems especially brazen. But as he entered his extradition hearing early Wednesday morning, dressed in an expensive suit, Portillo was smiling and waving to reporters like any good politician. As President, he knew all too well how Guatemala worked, but many of his countrymen now hope...