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News > Latin America

Interpol Issues Warrant for Guatemalan Media Baroness

  • Lorenzana Alba's picture was released by Interpol.

    Lorenzana Alba's picture was released by Interpol. | Photo: Interpol

Published 10 September 2016
Opinion

The business mogul owns four television channels in Guatemala.

Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Alba Elvira Lorenzana Cardona, the owner of several television channels in Guatemala, on charges that she funneled over US$23 million to disgraced former President Otto Perez Molina's political party in a pay-to-play kickback scheme.

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Charges were presented by Guatemala's attorney general and the U.S.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). The arrest warrant against her has been issued in 190 countries where Interpol has representation.

In exchange for the money to the Patriotic Party, 69 percent of the government's advertising from January 2012 to April of 2015 went to her media companies, La Prensa Libre reported.

Perez Molina and his Vice President Roxana Baldetti also received illicit funds from a group of state contractors to help finance their 2011 presidential election campaign. Contractors provided these funds on the promise they would be given preferential treatment in winning state contracts.

Both were forced to resign and were arrested in 2015 as a result of investigations into a fraud network dubbed "La Línea" (The Line), that lowered taxes on importers in exchange for financial kickbacks.

From May 2014 to February 2015, the CICIG estimates that the network earned roughly US$328,000 per week. Pérez Molina and Baldetti are currently in preventative custody as proceedings continue.

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