{"id":439398,"date":"2025-12-11T05:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T05:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439398\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T05:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T05:33:11","slug":"former-bolivian-president-luis-arce-arrested-in-corruption-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439398\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Bolivian President Luis Arce arrested in corruption investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) \u2014 Bolivian law enforcement officials on Wednesday arrested former President Luis Arce<\/a> as part of a corruption investigation, opening an uncertain chapter in the country\u2019s politics a month after the inauguration of conservative President Rodrigo Paz<\/a> ended 20 years of socialist rule<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A senior official in Paz\u2019s government, Marco Antonio Oviedo, told reporters that Arce had been arrested on charges of breach of duty and financial misconduct related to the alleged embezzlement of public funds during his stint as economy minister in the government of charismatic former leader Evo Morales<\/a> (2006-2019). <\/p>\n

A special police force dedicated to fighting corruption confirmed to The Associated Press that Arce was in custody at the unit\u2019s headquarters in Bolivia\u2019s capital of La Paz. <\/p>\n

Officials described Arce\u2019s arrest as proof of the new government\u2019s<\/a> commitment to fighting graft at the highest levels in fulfillment of its flagship campaign promise<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the decision of this government to fight corruption, and we will arrest all those responsible for this massive embezzlement,\u201d Oviedo said.<\/p>\n

But underlining the country\u2019s polarization, Arce\u2019s allies said his arrest was unjustified and smacked of political persecution.<\/p>\n

Accusations of theft from a fund for rural peasants<\/p>\n

Authorities accused Arce and other officials of diverting an estimated $700 million from a state-run fund dedicated to supporting the Indigenous people and peasant farmers who formed the backbone of Morales\u2019 Movement Toward Socialism party. As Bolivia\u2019s first Indigenous president, Morales transformed the country\u2019s power structure and gave Indigenous people<\/a>more sway than ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Serving on the board of directors of the Indigenous Peasant Development Fund from 2006 to 2017, Arce was in charge of allocating funds to social development projects in rural areas. During that time, officials allege, Arce siphoned off some of that money for personal expenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cArce was identified as the main person responsible for this vast economic damage,\u201d said Oviedo.<\/p>\n

Bolivia\u2019s attorney general, Roger Mariaca, told local media that Arce had invoked his right to remain silent during police questioning. <\/p>\n

He said Arce would remain in police custody overnight before being brought before a judge to determine whether he will remain detained pending trial. The charges against Arce carry a maximum sentence of 4-6 years in prison.<\/p>\n

An ex-president allegedly grabbed from the street<\/p>\n

Arce\u2019s key ally and former government minister, Maria Nela Prada, insisted on the ex-president\u2019s innocence and denounced the corruption scandal as a case of political persecution. <\/p>\n

Although the prosecution said it issued an arrest warrant, she said Arce was not notified of the case before he was bundled into a minivan with tinted windows in an upscale La Paz neighborhood on Wednesday and brought in for interrogation.<\/p>\n

Arce had been walking along the cafe-lined streets of Sopocachi after teaching an economics class at a major public university, Prada said, and managed to tell her of his arrest before losing communication. A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that account of events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a total abuse of power,\u201d Prada said, banging furiously on the doors of the police headquarters where Arce was being held. <\/p>\n

Mariaca, the prosecutor, promised the case was about nothing more than tackling graft in Bolivia. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not persecution, nor is it a political act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Paz swept to victory in October elections<\/a> on a wave of public outrage over the unmitigated shambles<\/a> that Arce\u2019s administration bequeathed its successors, including sky-high inflation<\/a>, a shortage of fuel and empty state coffers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Critical to his popularity was his running mate, the straight-talking, TikTok-savvy former police Capt. Edman Lara, who achieved celebrity status when he denounced high-ranking police officers for corruption.<\/p>\n

Courts not neutral arbiters<\/p>\n

Experts long have noted that Bolivia\u2019s brittle institutional framework fosters corruption, and that its politicized judiciary<\/a> often lets those in power off the hook \u2014 whether on the left or right of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

Morales, who guided the country through an era of economic growth and shrinking inequality before his fraught 2019 ouster, was accused of stacking the constitutional court and bending the laws to stay in power.<\/p>\n

When he resigned in the wake of mass protests over his disputed reelection<\/a> to a fourth term, the right-wing interim government that took over issued arrest warrants for Morales and his officials<\/a> on charges ranging from terrorism to corruption.<\/p>\n

Then Arce won the 2020 elections<\/a> and went on to target his own political rivals. <\/p>\n

Former interim president Jeanine A\u00f1ez was sentenced to 10 years in prison<\/a> on charges tied to her 2019 takeover and other right-wing opposition leaders landed in jail<\/a>. Judges even went after Morales, Arce\u2019s mentor-turned-rival, who remains hunkered down in Bolivia\u2019s remote tropics evading an arrest warrant<\/a> related to statutory rape.<\/p>\n

Shifting political winds<\/p>\n

With the pendulum now swinging back to the right, A\u00f1ez<\/a> and many of her allies<\/a> have walked free from prison. President Paz has set to work undoing<\/a> the leftist policies of Arce and Morales. <\/p>\n

Celebrating Arce\u2019s arrest on social media, Vice President Lara warned that the ex-president was just the first felled by what would become a wave of anti-corruption cases against former officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who have stolen from this country will return every last cent,\u201d Lara said, ending his message by wishing \u201cdeath to the corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

DeBre reported from Santiago, Chile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) \u2014 Bolivian law enforcement officials on Wednesday arrested former President Luis Arce as part…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":439399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[1578,82387,1613,17628,37326,82386,57,4228,202928,55028,1612,136884,202926,202927,50,80,159768,202929,4217,103,107],"class_list":["post-439398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-associated-press","tag-bolivia","tag-central-america","tag-corruption","tag-embezzlement","tag-evo-morales","tag-general-news","tag-indictments","tag-jeanine-aez","tag-la-paz","tag-latin-america","tag-luis-arce","tag-marco-antonio-oviedo","tag-maria-nela-prada","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-rodrigo-paz","tag-roger-mariaca","tag-south-america","tag-world","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115699306207751864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}