Overview

Otto Fernando Pérez Molina is a former Guatemalan military officer and president who served as a military commander in the Ixil Triangle region during the Guatemalan genocide of the early 1980s; in which the military systematically killed over 200;000 people; primarily indigenous Maya. He served under dictator Efraín Ríos Montt; who was convicted of genocide in 2013 (verdict later annulled on procedural grounds). Pérez Molina rose through the military intelligence apparatus (known as D-2); which was responsible for torture; disappearances; and extrajudicial killings. He was also involved in intelligence operations during the peace process in the 1990s. In 2012; he was elected President of Guatemala on a hardline security platform. In 2015; his presidency collapsed amid a massive corruption scandal uncovered by CICIG (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala); a UN-backed anti-corruption body. He was stripped of presidential immunity; resigned on September 2; 2015; and was arrested the next day on charges of customs fraud; bribery; and illicit association related to a corruption scheme called "La Línea" (The Line); in which his administration ran a network that offered importers reduced customs duties in exchange for kickbacks. His vice president; Roxana Baldetti; had already been arrested. He was convicted of corruption in December 2022. His trajectory from genocide-era military commander to democratically elected president to convicted criminal illustrates the impunity that protected perpetrators of Guatemala's genocide for decades.

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1 documented sources from official records, investigations, and reports