You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Guatemalan Presidential Runner-Up and Ex-First Lady Sandra Torres Arrested

HeadlineSep 04, 2019

In Guatemala, the runner-up in last month’s presidential election, Sandra Torres, was arrested at her home in Guatemala City early Monday morning. According to Guatemala’s attorney general, Torres is suspected of breaking campaign finance rules and unlawful association in the 2015 elections, the year Torres lost the presidential bid to outgoing President Jimmy Morales. More recently, she lost to right-wing leader Alejandro Giammattei, who will be inaugurated in January 2020. Former first lady Sandra Torres’s political career has been plagued by allegations of corruption and ties to criminal organizations. Her arrest came on the eve of Guatemala’s U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission CICIG’s formal expulsion from the country. CICIG had led the investigation against Torres. CICIG issued a final report describing the country as being “captured” by corruption at the hands of a “mafia coalition” involving politicians, the business community and wealthy elite that is “willing to sacrifice Guatemala’s present and future to guarantee impunity and preserve the status quo.”

Topics:
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top