GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – Guatemala’s former attorney general, accused of corruption and ousted last week, is only one of many public officials working with organized crime groups, the former head of a special United Nations investigative panel said on Monday.
Conrado Reyes was removed from his job as the country’s top prosecutor after the U.N. panel set up to uncover high-level misconduct in Guatemala accused him of having ties to lawyers carrying out illegal international adoptions and working with Mexican drug cartels.
Carlos Castresana, a Spanish judge who quit last week as head of the U.N. commission said on Monday that corruption in the justice system runs much deeper, complicating efforts to curb spiraling murder rates that have made Guatemala one of the most violent countries in Latin America.
“There is criminal activity including drug trafficking, murders, contraband, people trafficking and (authorities) enable criminal activity by guaranteeing impunity,” Castresana told a news conference.
He stepped down saying it was impossible to do his job with counterparts who protected criminals.
“The country’s institutions are infiltrated,” Castresana said. “We have to get rid of the corrupt public servants one by one. We have to get rid of people from the attorney general’s office, from the judiciary, from the interior ministry but this is scarcely the tip of the iceberg.”
Guatemala, still recovering from a 1960-96 civil war that killed around a quarter of a million people, is now battling rampant street crime by youth gangs and Mexican drug cartels who use Central America as a smuggling corridor.
Last week, four severed heads were dumped outside Guatemala’s Congress with ominous notes found with them addressed to the interior minister and the director of prisons.
