Former Guatemalan President arrested,

[rabs]

Portillo is a real sleaze, a Rios Montt crony. He was arrested today in Guatemala and could be extradited to New York.





http://www.newstimes.com/mediaManager/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=82069&width=628&height=471
FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008 picture, a police officer, unseen, takes a photo of former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo Cabrera after being extradited from Mexico to face corruption charges in Guatemala City. The former Guatemalan president was charged in the United States on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010 with using foreign banks to launder millions of dollars plundered from charity and government coffers. Portillo was Guatemala's leader from 2000 to 2004 before fleeing to Mexico. Photo: Rodrigo Abd / AP2008


NEW YORK (AP) — Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo has been charged with money laundering in a U.S. court.

An indictment unsealed Monday in New York accuses him of laundering millions of dollars starting in 2000. Prosecutors say some of the money was embezzled from the Guatemalan government and laundered through U.S. and overseas banks.

http://www.newstimes.com/default/article/Ex-Guatemalan-leader-Portillo-is-charged-in-US-335866.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. My god! I would never have heard this for years unless you had mentioned it.

By the time I had discovered it, this moment would already have been long in the past.

Hope the court will really stick it to him.

More than that, I hope what he has done will become public knowledge, that he will be totally undone. He deserves it.

Hope he rats out others of his subhuman group.

Thanks!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Ex-president arrested preparing to flee

Ex-president arrested preparing to flee
AP Last updated 14:55 27/01/2010

Police captured ex-President Alfonso Portillo at a beach preparing to flee Guatemala by boat Tuesday, (local time) a day after US authorities charged him with laundering money stolen from foreign donations to buy children's books.

Dozens of police, soldiers and federal agents arrested Portillo during a raid on a house in the coastal province of Izabal, said Carlos Castresana, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN agency created to battle corruption and crime in this Central American nation.

"They had hired a boat to leave from a beach at 9 a.m., but before that, police and soldiers surrounded the house where he was hiding out," Castresana said. Portillo, 58, was believed to be heading to neighboring Belize.

Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez said authorities had been following Portillo for four days before collaring him the day after a US indictment was unsealed in federal court in New York charging Portillo embezzled $1.5 ($NZ2.04) million in donations from Taiwan intended to buy school library books.

Portillo allegedly endorsed checks drawn from a New York bank and deposited them in a Miami account. The money then allegedly was transferred to a Paris account in the name of his ex-wife and daughter.

More:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/3267451/Ex-president-arrested-preparing-to-flee