Guatemala issues arrest warrants for Colombia AG, former UN corruption investigator

On Monday, Guatemala’s attorney general’s office issued arrest warrants for several individuals, including Colombia’s attorney general and a former UN anti-corruption prosecutor, which prompted a backlash from the foreign ministry in Bogota.

In a social media video, Rafael Curruchiche, head of Guatemala’s Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, stated that a Guatemalan court has released arrest warrants for Colombia’s Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo and Ivan Velasquez, an experienced Colombian prosecutor, over corruption allegations.

Curruchiche claimed in the video that Velasquez headed a “criminal organization” that aided entrepreneurs from the Brazilian construction firm previously named Odebrecht. According to the video, Camargo and Velasquez faced charges of criminal association, obstructing justice, influence peddling, and collusion.

In a social media post on Monday, Velasquez stated that the arrest warrants represented persecution by dishonest officials. A representative from the Colombia Attorney General’s office refused to provide any comments.

Velasquez received global acclaim for his efforts last decade as the leader of the UN-supported International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which in 2015 revealed a multi-million dollar corruption scandal that resulted in the resignation and detention of former Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina.

The CICIG went on to investigate Perez Molina’s successor, President Jimmy Morales, who eventually dissolved the commission in the nation. Curruchiche stated that Guatemala had asked Interpol to issue an alert for the apprehension of Camargo and Velasquez, along with several prominent former prosecutors from Guatemala.

On Monday, Colombia’s foreign ministry criticized the arrest warrants for Camargo and Velasquez, stating that Guatemala’s requests for Interpol’s arrest lacked legal justification and represented an “assault on the essential tenets of international justice.” Velasquez served as Colombia’s defense minister until earlier this year and was recently appointed as the nation’s ambassador to the Vatican.