On Wednesday, the U.S. justice system sentenced former Bolivian government minister Arturo Murillo to 70 months (5.8 years) in prison for corruption and money laundering.
The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that the former minister conspired «to launder bribes he received in exchange for corruptly helping a U.S. company win a lucrative contract with the Bolivian government».
Reports indicate that Murillo received at least $532,000 (502,000 euros) in bribe payments from a Florida-based company in order for the company to win a $5.6 million (5.3 million euros) contract to promote equipment to the Ministry of Defense.
In contrast to the statement published on the US Department of Justice website, the Bolivian attorney general, Wilfredo Chávez, said that Murillo has been sentenced to 7 years in prison, according to his official Twitter profile.
Chávez has indicated that this sentence puts an end to the process, due to the fact that it has an unappealable character, so that, from now on, the extradition process of the former minister, detained in Miami since May 2021, will move forward.
The Minister of Government, Eduardo Del Castillo, has also reacted to the sentence. «Proving once again, that the allegations we made as National Government were true», he has said on Twitter, adding that «the coup d’état was not only to seize power and murder our people», but also «to loot and steal» from the State.
Murillo — convicted in October 2022 of the crimes of international bribery and money laundering, as were her accomplices — was in her ministerial post during the term of Jeanine Áñez, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for the ‘coup d’état II’ case, in which she was accused of acting against the Bolivian Constitution by self-proclaiming herself president of the nation in 2019.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
