Guatemala President holds on to power despite corruption scandal

Perez Molina’s former Vice President Roxana Baldetti was detained Friday, August 21, 2015 in connection with a customs corruption scandal that led to her resignation.

Economy Minister Sergio de la Torre and Education Minister Cynthia del Aguila said they were standing down a day after the attorney general asked the Supreme Court for permission to prosecute Perez over a suspected customs racket.

The multimillion-U.S.-dollar fraud case has upended Guatemalan politics since it erupted in April, felling numerous high-ranking officials, forcing Baldetti’s resignation and now reaching the country’s highest office.

“We are going to face it head on, we are going to keep facing it”, he said at a public event in Zacapa department 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of Guatemala City.

Perez Molina, who has only months remaining in his term, has denied any wrongdoing.

Then Vice President Roxana Baldetti’s private secretary Juan Carlos Monzon was a suspected ringleader of the corruption ring and remains a fugitive. Authorities presented a chart diagramming the structure’s alleged organization that showed Monzon as the mastermind.

Velasquez said the taped phone calls included references to “Number One” and “Number Two”, which investigators had determined to be Perez and Baldetti.

The wide-ranging scandal has rocked Guatemala, sparking mass protests calling for conservative President Otto Perez to resign.

The evidence implicating Perez Molina and Baldetti in the corruption scandal comes from a combination of wiretap sessions and bank checks, receipts and other documents confiscated in subsequent search and seizure operations, according to Velasquez and Aldana Hernández.

General elections in the Central American nation, in which the president, vice president and members of Congress will be elected, are scheduled for September 6.

On Saturday, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the national palace and called for the resignation of Perez Molina.