Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Bolivian police have arrested Attorney General Roger Mariaca and 13 others on allegations of protecting drug traffickers, according to the government. The action came days after the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions on Mariaca and several senior officials over corruption allegations.
Mariaca, who was appointed to a six-year term in 2024 under Bolivia’s previous socialist government, was arrested as conservative President Rodrigo Paz moved closer to Washington on security cooperation. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the arrests as “bold and decisive actions to combat narco-trafficking, systemic corruption, and transnational organised crime in Bolivia”.
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Mariaca did not immediately comment on his arrest. Earlier, he had rejected the US allegations that he accepted bribes to help drug trafficking, calling them political pressure on his office. Anti-drug prosecutor Miguel Gonzales said late on Wednesday that police detained Mariaca without a warrant.
Interior Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo said on Thursday that authorities had “dismantled a criminal organization entrenched in the justice system” and that Mariaca would face charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. Oviedo said suspected Uruguayan drug kingpin Sebastin Marset was detained but quickly released in 2023 when Mariaca was chief prosecutor in the eastern region of Santa Cruz.
“They let him go, and not only that, they returned his seized assets,” Oviedo said of Marset, a longtime fugitive trafficker. Marset was captured in Bolivia last March and sent to the US to face money laundering charges.
Oviedo also alleged that cash seized from an ambulance leaving Mariaca’s home in Santa Cruz early on Thursday was linked to extortion of people seeking help from prosecutors. Prosecutor Daniel Ortuo said officers found 3.53 million bolivianos, about USD 294,000, and another USD 10,000 in the vehicle.
The other detainees included two prosecutors who were also named in this week’s US visa sanctions, part of a wider set of travel bans affecting more than a dozen officials across South America. The State Department said Monday’s measures supported the Shield of the Americas, the Trump administration’s security alliance with mostly conservative governments in the region, including Bolivia, to fight organised crime. The restrictions were the latest example of Washington using US visas to pressure critics and officials whose actions conflict with its priorities in Latin America.
Urging lawmakers to reform the justice system, Oviedo warned officials against working with criminal groups. “Either you stand with the law … or you stand with crime, with narcoterrorism,” he said. Paz, who took office last November and ended nearly two decades of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party of former President Evo Morales, has strengthened ties with Washington and resumed cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which Morales expelled along with the US ambassador in 2008.
The arrests of Mariaca and 13 others have placed Bolivia’s justice system under fresh scrutiny, while also underlining the Paz government’s closer security ties with the US and its stated push against drug trafficking and corruption.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
