PALM BEACH, FLORIDA – FEBRUARY 10: Fernando Cerimedo speaks during Hispanic Prosperity Gala – Latino Wall Street at Mar-a-Lago on February 10, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Getty Images/Photo by Jason Koerner/ for Latino Wall Street
Fernando Cerimedo’s legal troubles in Bolivia have multiplied fast. A La Paz judge ordered Cerimedo to be sent to the country’s toughest prison on a second detention order, prosecutors confirmed a fourth open investigation, and the Argentine consultant spoke at length for the first time since his arrest. Below is where things actually stand:
A Second Lockup Order, Aimed at a Tougher Prison
La Paz judge Douglas Borda closed a marathon six-hour virtual hearing on Saturday by ordering Cerimedo held for six more months, this time in the illicit-enrichment case rather than the attempted-femicide case that already has him in Santa Cruz’s Palmasola penitentiary. Borda specified the new stint should be served at Chonchocoro, the maximum-security prison on La Paz’s high plateau. What the ruling left unsettled is which of the two cases takes priority for an actual transfer, and Cerimedo’s lawyer objects to the move on safety grounds, telling a Bolivian TV network that prosecutors never proved how his client harmed the state.
The hearing itself turned into a public brawl with Bolivia’s own government. Vice President Edmand Lara showed up to argue in favor of sending Cerimedo to Chonchocoro, and Cerimedo hit back hard, calling him a liar and arguing that his own influence inside the Paz administration has been wildly overstated: “if I had real power, many things in Bolivia would not have happened.” He also used the hearing to walk back a document that had circulated with his name on it: a business card listing him as the president’s “chief adviser” was, he said, only a design sample that was never actually printed because no such post exists in the Bolivian state.
Two More Open Files — Though Only One Is Freshly Opened
Cerimedo is now facing four separate criminal files at once, and it’s worth being precise about which ones are actually new. Santa Cruz’s domestic-violence unit opened its case the day after the Aug. 17 shooting, built around social-media images in which Beller displayed bruising she says dated to the previous month. The genuinely new front is in Beni, the Amazonian department bordering Brazil, where prosecutors confirmed an investigation into whether Cerimedo helped shield small aircraft moving through the town of Santa Ana that investigators suspect were tied to drug trafficking. The Beni prosecutor in charge has said the probe could widen to public officials or private citizens if the evidence supports it.
Separately, investigators have carried out at least four raids plus a fifth stop at what looked like an office being set up, seizing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, satellite phones, vehicles and a police-issue shirt from properties tied to Cerimedo. A lieutenant colonel who leads intelligence for Bolivia’s anti-narcotics police, identified as Erik Correa González, has acknowledged knowing Cerimedo and supplying him with security gear, including drones, and confirmed getting a call from him the day of the Beller shooting asking him to check on her — though he denied any role in the attack. A separate tip led investigators to carry out raids around Porongo, outside Santa Cruz, in search of foreign fugitives connected to the shooting itself, not to the financial case. Two people are already sitting in preventive detention in a La Paz jail as that case develops.
Cerimedo Talks — and the Numbers Don’t Line Up
For the first time, Cerimedo gave detailed answers under questioning, first in a voluntary statement to La Paz prosecutors and then during Saturday’s detention hearing. He described himself as an international political consultant running firms in Argentina and the United States, said he has no bank accounts in Bolivia, and denied ever holding Bolivian citizenship: he told the judge he only has residency under a Mercosur agreement. He described his relationship with Beller as a brief affair and said the entire enrichment case traces back to a single TikTok video she posted.
On what he actually earns, the record gets messy. In his morning statement, Cerimedo told prosecutors his outside consulting work brings in close to $1 million a month, both in 2025 and so far in 2026. Hours later, at the detention hearing, Cerimedo described his answer differently, putting his declared income at $1 million a year rather than a month. Whichever number is right, it sits well above the roughly $500,000 to $700,000 in cash that prosecutors say they have seized from properties linked to him so far.
Beller Answers Back, Though Her Own Testimony Is On Hold
Responding on social media after Saturday’s hearing, Beller rejected Cerimedo’s denials outright: “his interference in the state is undeniable, and it was never selfless,” she wrote, adding that she still holds documents she intends to hand to prosecutors, including a screenshot from a February chat that shows what’s labeled as the government’s approved 2026 staffing plan.
It’s worth noting what Beller has and hasn’t done in this case so far. In press interviews over the past two weeks she has accused Cerimedo of running a scheme involving marked-up fuel distribution, an elite police unit that answered to him personally, and payments to legislators to secure votes on specific bills. Prosecutors cited those public claims when they opened the enrichment investigation. But when she was formally summoned to give sworn testimony in that same case, the session was suspended after she asked to be classified as a protected witness, and as of this writing there’s no public confirmation that she has since completed that testimony.
The Government Responds, and the First Lady Is Pulled In
President Paz has now spoken directly about Cerimedo, telling Bolivians in a recorded message: “Mr. Cerimedo never had authorization to represent this government or my family.” He described Cerimedo’s actual role as a tactical adviser limited to the election campaign and the opening months of his term — a narrower account than the one Lara, Beller and several unnamed officials have given. Opposition lawmaker Sandra Rivero used the moment to press a broader point, arguing that Bolivia’s government leans too heavily on informal advisers who never sign a transparent contract.
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