GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – Fighting graft accusations, Guatemala’s former President Otto Perez said yesterday he could have made “10 or 15 times” the money he is accused of stealing if he had taken bribes offered by powerful Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Perez resigned as president on Thursday and was jailed while a judge weighs charging him in a corruption scandal that sparked widespread protests and upended his government ahead of tomorrow’s presidential election.
A judge ordered him to remain in jail until his hearing resumes on Tuesday.
Returning to court for his second day of hearings, Perez said Guzman tried to buy him off shortly after he was captured in Guatemala in 1993. Guzman spent almost a decade in a high security prison near the Mexican city of Guadalajara, before bribing guards to escape in 2001.
Perez, a 64-year-old retired army general, said he led the operation that resulted in Guzman’s arrest over 20 years ago.
“The first thing (Guzman) did was try and negotiate,” Perez told the judge. “The (bribe) offer we got after his capture is perhaps 10 or 15 times the amount that you’re accusing me of here, and I didn’t do it because it went against my principles.”
Perez is accused by prosecutors of stealing $3.7 million in a customs scheme.
Guzman is one of the world’s top crime bosses, running the Sinaloa Cartel, which has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States.
