Guatemala: Prosecutor is named “corrupt character” of 2023 by journalist network

The attorney general of GuatemalaConsuelo Porras, was named this Thursday as the “corrupt character” 2023 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Organization (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists.

Consuelo Porras is “one of the many bureaucrats who have helped derail democracy”indicates that organization in the presentation of this award, which they have awarded to questioned politicians and public officials around the world since 2012.

Last year, the winner of the “corrupt character of the year” of the OCCRP was the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for the role he played in the beginning of the Russia’s war with Ukraine.

The OCCRP points out that the jury, made up of six journalists, chose Porras for having been ““an effective instrument to gut the rule of law” and leading the attempt to prevent the inauguration of the elected president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo de León.

According to María Teresa Ronderos, a Colombian journalist and member of the qualifying jury, the Attorney General of Guatemala “has brutally persecuted honest prosecutors, journalists and activists, forcing them into exile and depriving the public of these crucial checks on authority.”

Consuelo Porras, who is serving her second consecutive term as head of the Prosecutor’s Office, was sanctioned by the United States in 2022, when she was accused of “undermine dozens of corruption investigations” involving senior officials and businessmen of Guatemala.

Since last July 12, the Public Ministry (Prosecutor’s Office), under his command, began a series of actions that sought not to recognize the electoral results that gave the progressive Arévalo de León the winner of the presidency.

For his part, Arévalo de León has described the actions of the Prosecutor’s Office as an attempt to “coup” to prevent him from assuming the presidency on January 14.

The OCCRP is an investigative platform of a global network of journalists and independent media centers that aims to expose crime and corruption so that the public can hold power to account, as indicated on its website.