Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca delivers a speech after swearing in on Oct 22, 2024. (AFP Photo)
Bolivian police arrested Attorney General Roger Mariaca on Sept. 30, two days after the United States revoked his visa over alleged links to drug trafficking, a government source told AFP.
Santa Cruz prosecutor Alberto Zeballos, who has likewise been sanctioned by Washington, was also arrested, according to local media.
Both were among the nearly 20 people from Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador whom the U.S. State Department accused this week of corruption, links to drug trafficking, or conspiring against their respective governments.
Police also raided the prosecutor’s offices in Sucre on Sept. 30, as seen in a live broadcast on the institution’s social media accounts.
“We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being carried out illegally,” the office’s head of communications Claudia Pardo said as she and several colleagues were surrounded by hooded police officers, the video showed.
Washington earlier said that Mariaca received “bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and help violent criminals evade justice.”
The attorney general denied the accusations on Sept. 28 and insisted in a statement to the press that the decision is an act of “interference” and “political pressure” in response to his investigations.
