Guatemala<\/a>‘s fight against corruption has intensified with the arrest of a former president and nine of his ex-ministers.<\/p>\n Alvaro Colom and members of his former cabinet are suspected of having embezzled funds and committing fraud while helping set up a public bus system in Guatemala City in 2010.<\/p>\n Ivan Velasquez, head of Guatemala’s international commission against impunity (CICIG), said on Tuesday: “[Colom] intervened personally and institutionally to facilitate the fraudulent procedure of creating the agreement.”<\/p>\n Prosecutors said there are questions around how the government auctioned off concessions and granted subsidies for the buses.<\/p>\n The current chairman of Oxfam International and former Guatemalan finance minister, Juan Alberto Fuentes, was among those arrested.<\/p>\n Fuentes detention comes as Oxfam is already reeling from a sexual abuse scandal<\/a> in Haiti and elsewhere.<\/p>\n Guatemala is no stranger to corruption scandals. Over the past decade, international investigators have been working with local prosecutors to peel back the layers of corruption<\/a> that plague the small Central American country.<\/p>\n In 2015, mass anti-corruption protests helped oust former president Otto Perez Molina<\/a>.<\/p>\n He is now on trial, accused of stealing millions of dollars from the country’s customs offices.<\/p>\n Current president, Jimmy Morales, tried to kick out Velasquez after he pushed to remove Morales’ immunity to face prosecution in another corruption investigation.<\/p>\n Analysts say these political arrests are far from over.<\/p>\n “I think the CICIG and the Attorney General’s office are just scratching the surface of this issue,” said Arturo Matute of the International Crisis Group.<\/p>\n “Without a doubt, there are many more investigations under way which will take years to uncover.”<\/p>\n The upcoming selection of a new attorney general will be pivotal if these investigations are to continue.<\/p>\n Experts say Guatemalans need to be vigilant to ensure the country’s next top prosecutor has their interests at heart, and not those of the political elite.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/02\/guatemala-president-ministers-arrested-graft-180214061626241.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guatemala ex-president, ministers arrested over graft – Al Jazeera Guatemala‘s fight against corruption has intensified with the arrest of a former president and nine of his ex-ministers. Alvaro Colom and members of his former cabinet are suspected of having embezzled funds and committing fraud while helping set up a public bus system in Guatemala City in 2010. Ivan Velasquez, head… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Layers of corruption<\/strong><\/h2>\n