Arturo Murillo, ex m …

Former government minister of Bolivia’s last de facto administration, Arturo Murillo, has been arrested in the United States on charges of money laundering and corruption, along with another former Bolivian official and three American citizens, the Department of Justice of the North American country. .

“Two Bolivian citizens and three US citizens were arrested on May 21 and 22 in Florida and Georgia on criminal charges relating to their alleged roles in a bribery and money laundering scheme.”, says the US government statement.

Murillo and his chief of staff, Sergio Méndez, “are accused of receiving bribes from an American company and individuals to obtain a contract with the Bolivian government and then use the American financial system to launder these bribes, “said the Justice Ministry.

According to court documents, Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic, 57, Sergio Rodrigo Méndez Mendizábal, 51, Luis Berkman, 58, Bryan Berkman, 36, and Philip Lichtenfeld, 48, participated in the corruption system between November 2019 and around April 2020, “in which the Americans” paid $ 602,000 in bribes to Bolivian government officials for the benefit of Murillo, the former Bolivian government minister, Méndez, the former chief of staff of the Bolivian government ministry and another Bolivian government official “.

Murillo and Méndez, then government minister and chief of staff respectively, are accused of having received bribes allegedly paid by an American company and individuals, in an attempt to guarantee a contract with the Bolivian government for the purchase of tear gas, then use the US financial system to launder those bribes.

Parallel, Daniel Aliss Paredes, Brother-in-law of Arturo Murillo, was arrested this Wednesday in Cochabamba while he was retiring money and valuables a safe on behalf of the former government minister, the portal reported Rusia today.

Also this wednesday the current Bolivian government minister, Eduardo del Castillo, announced in La Paz that it had been decidedor ask the United States for the extradition of former de facto officials, who are accused in Bolivia of embezzling public funds by buying high-cost riot equipment for the Bolivian armed and security forces.

Susana Ríos, Deputy Minister of Institutional Transparency Fight against corruption He claimed that the Murillo case was only just beginning: “We must investigate all those involved in this operation, where we must identify what has been triangulating resources on the basis of information that has already been brought to the knowledge of the public prosecutor, product of the FBI investigation ”.