Rafael Curruchiche: the relentless prosecutor in Guatemala who leads judges, prosecutors and journalists into 'exile' or jail

The headquarters of the Prosecutor's Office has become the epicenter of protests in Guatemala in recent weeks in defense of democracy. The protesters label the Attorney General of the Public Ministry, Consuelo Porras, and the head of the Special Prosecutor's Office Against Impunity (FECI), Rafael Curruchiche, as “coup plotters”.. The people who attend the marches do not forgive Curruchiche for being about to ruin the 653,000 votes that catapulted the Seed Movement to second place in the first round of the Guatemalan elections held on June 25. From his office came the request to the judge of the Seventh Court, Fredy Orellana, to order the suspension of the legal personality of Semilla. The judge accepted the petition and hours before the results of the elections were made official, he gave the Supreme Electoral Tribunal a period of 24 hours to cancel the party, whose candidate, Bernardo Arévalo de León, aspires to the Presidency of the country in the second round. August 20. However, the Constitutional Court brought order and granted an injunction to Semilla, preventing the prosecutor's request from coming true as it went against the Electoral and Political Parties Law.

Specifically, the head of the FECI has launched a case called 'Seed Corruption', since he considers that “there are indications that possibly more than 5,000 citizens were illegally adhered to this political party by forging their handwriting and signature”. It also indicates that “12 deceased persons” were enrolled in the training. The US, the European Union and the Organization of American States have already rejected the intention to jeopardize democracy and the rule of law, although the prosecutor has not been intimidated and his Prosecutor's Office has twice raided the TSE's Registry of Citizens , while on July 23, he searched the headquarters of Semilla from where documentation was taken on its constitution process in 2018.

Since Consuelo Porras was appointed head of the Prosecutor's Office in 2018, some thirty prosecutors, judges and journalists have left the country after being investigated and persecuted, for which they denounce that they are in “exile”.. Among them, the former head of the FECI, Juan Francisco Sandoval, who, at the time of his removal from office in July 2021, was investigating the alleged link between a Russian plot and the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei with an alleged full carpet. of money in exchange for being able to control a seaport. One of them, for which a judge has even requested his extradition from the US, is related to the case that affects the president and founder of El Periódico, José Rubén Zamora, who has been in prison for a year and was sentenced to six years imprisonment. jail on June 14 for laundering money and other assets. The FECI appealed the sentence, since it requested against Zamora 40 years in prison for trying to dispose of 300,000 quetzales (37,500 euros) whose origin was illegal.

'EXILE' OR JAIL

Curruchiche and her boss Consuelo Porras have also attacked the former attorney general, Thelma Aldana, who has been in “exile” from the US for more than three years, having five arrest warrants against her.. Aldana uncovered these cases at the hands of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN body that operated in the country from 2007 to 2019 when former President Jimmy Morales decided not to renew his mandate, due to several investigations against him for illegal electoral financing of his party FCN-Nación in the 2015 elections that he won.

Precisely, Curruchiche was directing the Electoral Crimes Prosecutor at that time, which was to investigate the formation of the former president, although the investigations stalled and the process came to nothing.. This caused the then judge of Higher Risk D, Erika Aifán, to denounce him in 2019 for breach of duty, usurpation of functions and abuse of authority.. This did not prevent Consuelo Porras from promoting him to head of the FECI and even Aifán resigned in March 2021 as a judge after 19 years of work and also went into “exile” from the US fleeing “persecutions, threats and harassment”.. The digital newspaper El Faro published that the judge had a complaint in her office that revealed that, in 2009, when the current president of the country, Alejandro Giammattei, aspired to the Presidency, he negotiated with the then Minister of Communications, José Luis Benito, a contribution of 2.6 million dollars for his electoral campaign, in exchange for leaving the official in his post.

Meanwhile, several former prosecutors who worked with Sandoval and the CICIG have ended up in jail.. Among them, the former head of the FECI in the Department of Quetzaltenango, Virginia Laparra, imprisoned since February 2022 for having denounced on four occasions in 2018 the bad practices of a judge whom she accused of leaking information to a lawyer.. The case against the judge was closed and Congress even elected him Rapporteur Against Torture, while she was sentenced in December last year to four years in prison for abuse of authority, despite the fact that the UN has labeled it “arbitrary”. his detention for “exercising his fundamental rights and freedoms”.

Curruchiche, who assumed the leadership of the FECI in August 2021, was included last year in the US Engel List of corrupt and undemocratic actors. The State Department accused him of “obstructing investigations of acts of corruption by disrupting high-profile corruption cases against government officials and filing apparently spurious complaints against FECI prosecutors, private lawyers, and CICIG members.”. Likewise, Consuelo Porras was included in the same List in 2021 and the US accuses her of “corrupt acts that undermine democracy in Guatemala” by dismissing prosecutors who were investigating corruption. Despite this, Giammattei re-elected her for four more years and her term ends in 2026.