Alfonso Portillo

Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera (Zacapa, September 24, 1951) is a Guatemalan businessman and politician. He was president of Guatemala between January 14, 2000 and January 14, 2004.

During his government, Portillo attacked the "regime of privileges" of formal economic power in Guatemala after the signing of the 1996 Peace Agreement ―mainly those of sugar, chicken, cement and beer producers―, but His legitimacy as president was undermined by the international reputation of the leader of his political party, General Efraín Ríos Montt - who was compared to the Chilean General Augusto Pinochet - and the existence of a structurally corrupt and inefficient State in Guatemala that worsened with his government.

At the end of his term, he had strong opposition against him, including in the mass media and in civil society groups in Guatemala. He was unable to assume the position of deputy of the Central American Parliament - a position that corresponded to him as former president of Guatemala― and fled to Mexico from where he was later deported to Guatemala at the request of justice; In 2013 he was extradited to the United States accused of embezzlement by the American justice system, after being preventively imprisoned in a military base in Guatemala for several years. Portillo pleaded guilty before the US courts in March 2014, thus achieving that his prison sentence was greatly reduced, in addition to the time he had already been imprisoned in Guatemala being credited to him.

He returned to Guatemala at the end of February 2015 and announced that, although he was not going to participate in elected positions, he was going to work to "help" his country. However, in May 2015 it became public that He would participate as a candidate for deputy for the national list of the Todos party in the general elections of September 6, 2015, although on July 13 of the same year the registry of citizens of the TSE denied him registration as a candidate arguing article 113 of the Constitution. of the Republic. Even so, he continued to be the image of the party and to propagandize the party created by Roberto Alejos and led by Felipe Alejos.

Biography

He was born in Zacapa, a department in the east of the country, into a middle-class family. He moved to Mexico at the age of 19 where he completed his university studies at the Autonomous University of Guerrero. He received his university education in Mexico, first graduating in Legal and Social Sciences from the Autonomous University of Guerrero (UAG) and then obtaining a doctorate in Economic Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

On August 23, 1982 in Chilpancingo, Guerrero state in Mexico, Portillo shot and killed Gustavo Cabrera Encarnación and Arturo Visoso, both students at the Autonomous University of Guerrero, in an incident that occurred at the end of a dance. Portillo unholstered his pistol, fired it several times, and Cabrera and Visoso fell dead instantly. Portillo fled from Mexican justice, first to Mexico City and then to Guatemala.

According to Article 308 of the Mexican Federal Penal Code, homicide due to a fight is punishable by up to eight years in prison, although it indicates that the setting of penalties depends on who was the provoker and who was the provocateur, as well as the greater or lesser importance of provocation. On the other hand, Article 101 of said penal code indicates that the prescription of the crime is personal and the passage of the law is sufficient for it, but it warns that the periods for the prescription will be doubled for those who are outside the Mexico; for its part, Article 105 of the same code indicates that criminal action prescribes within a period equal to the arithmetic mean of the custodial sentence established by law for the crime in question. According to This, having escaped to Guatemala, Portillo would have doubled the statute of limitations for his crime, extending it from a possible maximum of sixteen to thirty-two years and from a minimum of eight to sixteen years, since he was charged with both murders.< sup>[citation required]

However, on August 15, 1995, the first judge of first instance of the criminal branch of the Judicial District of Bravo, declared the criminal action against Portillo time-barred, thirteen years after the murders against the students were committed, so suspected of buying and selling influence to get his judicial persecution lifted.^{[citation required]}

Political career

He was a member of the disappeared Guerrilla Army of the Poor, one of the four organizations that made up the leftist guerrilla of Guatemala, until he returned to the country in 1989. He began his political life by joining the Democratic Socialist Party (PSD), later In 1989 he joined the Guatemalan Christian Democracy party (DCG), of which he became general secretary and was elected deputy in 1994. In 1995 he retired from the Guatemalan Christian Democracy party and some time later joined the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front party. founded by retired general Efraín Ríos Montt, a party originally intended to support Ríos Montt's presidential aspirations. This makes possible the candidacy of Portillo, who lost the 1995 elections against Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen. In 1999 Alfonso Portillo ran again, this time obtaining a large victory over the ruling party's candidate Óscar Berger, taking office in January 2000.

Presidency (2000-2004)

He assumed the presidency on January 14, 2000. During the inauguration ceremony he was inaugurated by Efraín Ríos Montt, who was then president of the Guatemalan Congress, and in his first speeches he spoke of the terrible situation in which he found himself. the country, and its intention to investigate and clarify the financial situation of Guatemala. He also proposed to the other political parties, mainly the opposition left-wing party, New Nation Alliance (ANN), a governability pact in which he could comply with his executive plan.

Successes and popularity

Among the achievements of his government are subsidies for the construction of popular housing and the promotion of Educational Reform and teacher training. During his government there was control of the basic basket, improvement of salaries, and created the social rate in electrical energy; All of these factors made President Portillo very popular among the lower classes of the Guatemalan population, which make up more than seventy percent of the country's population. Likewise, his speech had many elements of class struggle since it started from a position that favored the poor, the excluded, the dispossessed, while at the same time posing a clear confrontation against the businessmen, against the monopolies in the country, against all the privileges that that economic sector has; This brought him closer to the left, to the demands and needs of the popular sectors, predominant in the rural areas of the country.

Economy

Throughout 2001, the mobilizations of various popular groups in protest against the failure to fulfill electoral promises in the social field and the increase at the end of July in the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 10 to 12%, increased indirect tax, which was the only notable tax reform in the four-year period, although it did not modify the tax burden on income or increase the fight against evasion and fraud. Of course, already in that year, scandals and controversies surrounded the Government and the FRG, accused everywhere of taking State institutions to an unprecedented level of corruption; On the other hand, the consolidation of pockets of famine in the most depressed areas of the country.

Bankruptcy of the twin banks

In 2000, with the beginning of the FRG Government, the name of Francisco José Alvarado MacDonald, also known as Don Paco, or "The Engineer", began to be mentioned in Guatemala, who was a businessman and banker and who, according to According to information at the time, he was the main financier of Portillo's presidential campaign. His main companies were two banks: Banco Metropolitano and Banco Promotor; the twin banks, as they were also called. When Portillo won the presidency, Alvarado MacDonald loaned him a large house in a luxurious area of the Guatemalan capital. According to the press on that occasion, before winning the Presidency, Portillo had been the advisor who managed the public, institutional and political relations of Alvarado MacDonald's multiple companies, especially those of the twin banks.

According to what was learned in the press, in the early 90s, the banker met former President Portillo and since then they cultivated a close friendship; In 1995, Alvarado spent more than three million dollars on Portillo's presidential campaign, according to unofficial reports.

Upon taking power, Portillo appointed two sons of Alvarado MacDonald to key positions:

• José Francisco Alvarado: managing director of the Presidency of the Republic, while he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Bank and treasurer of a company that sells European luxury cars; he also coordinated the Multisectoral Transport Commission, where the government handled all the matters of the buses, many of which are customers of that company that represents a brand of motors.
• Alfredo Alvarado: Secretary of Special Affairs of the Presidency, and was also a member of the Board of Directors of the other bank, El Promotor.

Portillo also accepted that a car he used was property of the banker.

In January 2001, Portillo ordered the Monetary Board to inject one hundred and ten million dollars into the twin banks so that they would not fail; but on March 1, 2001, the Monetary Board ordered the intervention of the twin banks, due to administrative irregularities. The State injected more than two hundred million dollars into the banks to guarantee the savings of account holders; Months later, the Bank of Guatemala recognized that that money was practically lost.

Confrontation with the business sector

Portillo became the most detested ruler for the formal economic power of Guatemala in the century xxi since he directly confronted said group and a way that reflected self-satisfaction rather than a political objective. For example, Portillo opened import quotas for chicken meat, flour, sugar and other products to combat the rise in basic consumer products, which were controlled by monopolistic groups in Guatemala. In addition to the challenging speeches he gave and which earned him enmity with Guatemalan businessmen, by weakening the fight against drug trafficking and appearing surly in front of diplomatic representatives of the United States, he cultivated an animosity that sooner rather than later turned against him.^{[citation required]}

The monopolies that Portillo faced were:

• Beer: Beer represented 1.7 % of the gross national product in Guatemala and until 2002 was a monopoly of the Central American brewery, which had more than a century of existence. In 2003, the Government of Portillo allowed the entry into the market of the Rio Cervecería (now AMBEV Central America), subsidiary of the Brazilian company AMBEV in an alliance with Embotelladora la Mariposa, and allowed the start of operations of the North Bever Distributor, which was associated with the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma breweries of Mexico and Heineken International of the Netherlands. The beer "Brahva" entered the market with a price of 30% lower than that of Gallo beer and in the middle year it managed to capture 30% of the market.
• Cemento: the cement in Guatemala had been produced in Guatemala by the monopoly of Cementos Novela, S.A. since 1899, which changed its name to Cementos Progreso in the 1970s and was the largest cement producer in Central America in 2003. This monopoly was broken when the Portillo Government authorized the importance of Cruz Azul cement.
• Pollo: To stop the constant and unjustified increases of chicken, caused by the monopoly of the Gutiérrez family, Alfonso Portillo allowed the import of Pollo Tyson and Hudson from the United States. The American chicken was cheaper for the consumer than the chicken produced in Guatemala even though it was produced with more expensive labor and transported from a great distance in refrigerated trucks. In 2000, the first year of Portillo ' s Government, chicken was imported in the amount of twenty-one million dollars, while for 2004, its last year of Government, the figure increased to thirty-eight million dollars. Although the tariff established for the import of chicken was 15% on value imports continued to increase.
• Sugar: Although sugar was the main export product in Guatemala and that Guatemala was the fifth global producer at that time, the profitability of sugar in the domestic market was significantly higher than that of export due to higher prices and import protection. Sugars had enormous political power and got the domestic market protected with an ad valorem tariff of 20%. Sugar producers were associated with the Asociación de Azucareros de Guatemala (ASAZGUA), whose function was to determine sugar quotas for export and pricing in Guatemalan territory. The Government of Portillo authorized the import of sugar from Cuba and Brazil at a lower price than that produced in Guatemala by the ingenuities of the Herrera family, descendants of former president Carlos Herrera and Luna, and the ingenious members of ASAZGUA. Towards the end of its management, Portillo recognized its failures in fiscal reform without ambiguity; now, he rejected the tax fiasco to the "boicot" of the CACIF, which presented numerous legal remedies that suspended the application of several taxes, and ruled out of ours in particular against the sugar producers for the price of this basic product and above decided to oppose the extra-sugar imports. Emphasizing his clashes with the private sector, Portillo said that “being against the oligarchy had a political cost”.

Justice

Compensation for victims of the civil war

Portillo read the conclusions of an investigation by the Presidential Commission on Human Rights (COPREDEH), established in July 1991 by then-president Jorge Serrano Elías, and in which he admitted the responsibility of the Court specifically in two massacres committed by the Army in 1982, under the de facto Government of Efraín Ríos Montt at the time: that of the towns of Plan de Sánchez, in the central department of Baja Verapaz, and Dos Erres, in Petén, to the north, where ninety-one were murdered at point-blank range. two civilians respectively, as well as in eight political crimes committed until 1990. Portillo promised to compensate the relatives of the victims and seek the prosecution of the guilty, although he did not specify the measures that the Government was going to take. The promises of compensation to The victims of state or parastatal violence recognized by COPREDEH were partially fulfilled by Portillo: he paid close to 8 million dollars to the families of those murdered in Dos Erres although there was no criminal justice.

Panama Connection

In July 2001, an envelope was given anonymously by a lawyer at a journalism ethics seminar in Washington, D.C. (United States). In the envelope was a document containing a list of corporations and banks in which bank accounts would be opened. In the list several names and nicknames appeared handwritten along with the names of the banking entities:

• «July»: Julio Girón (private secretary of the Presidency).
• «Paco»: Juan Francisco Reyes López (vice-president of the Nation).
• "Panky": Juan Francisco Reyes Wyld (son of the vice president).
• «Alfonso»: Alfonso Portillo (president of the Nation).

On the basis of this document, eight paper companies were found with accounts in at least five Panamanian banks and three offshore banks. All the accounts were related to President Portillo, Juan Antonio Riley Paiz, the president's brother-in-law, Vice President Reyes and his son, as well as Portillo's private secretary. Apparently, the person in charge of managing the network was César Augusto Medina Farfán, friend of the president.

Journalistic investigations found that accounts were opened in Panama in several banks, in the names of all those investigated. In the case of President Portillo, an attempt was made to open at least two accounts, but possibly it did not succeed because the bank asked for a copy of his passport and an affidavit from the "true owner" of the account. It was assumed that the deposits made in the accounts came from the Guatemalan treasury, but this could never be verified.

The research carried out encountered these difficulties:

• Bank secrecy in Panama and corporate veil of anonymous companies.
• One of the sources, under heavy pressure, decided to retract, although the documents obtained by journalists had more weight than their single words.
• The Panamanian authorities refused to give information that was requested on the travel of the presidential plane to Panama.
• The distance was another factor, as there was no simultaneous follow-up. Δ
• The journalistic agendas of both journals were different. Δ
• The judicial investigations that followed the publication suffered all kinds of pressures, both in Panama and Guatemala. There was even a resignation of several prosecutors in Guatemala in charge of this case.

Mistakes

With the help of the Government of Japan, fertilizer was delivered to small farmers, but unfortunately, with that project a focus of corruption arose that sought to benefit senior government officials. The supposedly free fertilizer - which was often charged for even though the Government of Japan was donating it - turned out to be poor quality fertilizer, as it was discovered to have low levels of NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) which They are the primary nutrients of plants.^{[citation needed]}

The Portillo Government was criticized for the absence of tangible achievements in the fight against crime. The Dialogue Group, formed by friendly nations and international financial organizations, requested greater compliance with the Peace Agreements, efficiency in compensation to victims of the armed conflict and effective combating corruption. Furthermore, the indigenous people had little access to land and few resources for their programs.

Instead of fighting corruption, his Government is considered by local analysts as "one of the most corrupt in recent history."

Day of «Black Thursday»

On June 6, 2003, the Citizen Registry refused to register the candidacy of Ríos Montt, a refusal that was supported by separate pronouncements from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), on June 16, and from the CSJ, on July 5.. The Constitution of Guatemala in its article 186, paragraph "a indicates that neither "the leader nor the leaders of a coup d'état, armed revolution or similar movement that has altered the constitutional order" can run for the presidency of the Republic., nor those who as a consequence of such events assume the Head of Government"; Since General Ríos Montt had been appointed head of state by the military who carried out the coup d'état on March 23, 1982, he was constitutionally unable to become president. Then, the victim complained before the Constitutional Court (CC), the country's supreme judicial magistrate, which ruled in his favor on July 14, revoking the ruling of the CSJ and ordering the registration of the application, based on the argument that The 1982 coup d'état had not broken the constitutional order, because it had already been broken since the governments of Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García and Fernando Romeo Lucas García had triumphed at the polls through flagrant electoral fraud.

On July 18, the opposition party National Unity of Hope (UNE) requested protection from the CSJ against the ruling of the CC, to which it agreed two days later, leaving the candidacy on hold. On July 21 In July, Ríos Montt, irritated, warned of possible "acts of violence" if the CSJ did not allow him to run in the elections while filing a complaint with the CC.

On July 24 at dawn, FRG sympathizers occupied streets in zones 9 and 10, which are the areas where the main Guatemalan merchants and industrialists had their offices in Guatemala City. Wearing balaclavas, Zapatista style, and some wearing t-shirts with prints of Che Guevara, raised slogans against the country's elites and surrounded buildings of well-known Guatemalan industrialists - there was even a group of protesters who went to the Banco Reformador building, in zone 10 of Guatemala City., where the Gutiérrez family group is based, who had to leave the place by helicopter. The protesters were hostile to journalists and demanded the registration of General Ríos Montt's presidential candidacy; Thirty-six hours later they left the city without the police intervening to stop the riots.

The riots were aggravated by the manifest passivity of the National Civil Police.^{[citation required]} Eight hours after the riots began, President Portillo in a national statement He assured that under his Government no protests had been repressed, whether from farmers, unionists, teachers or parties, but he offered to bring in the army to control riots. As the soldiers on the streets were few and operated only in peripheral areas, the president was accused of violating the law. In the end, the riots were controlled three hours after the second day of the events.

The reactions of condemnation and alert to what was happening in Guatemala spread outside of Guatemala and were assumed by the Government of the United States, the UN, the OAS and the European Union; but Ríos Montt got what he wanted: on July 30, after presenting a new appeal for expansion and clarification, he obtained authorization from the Constitutional Court to proceed without delay to register the candidacy.

These violent protests in Guatemala City were later known as "Black Thursday" and "Friday of Mourning"; Curiously, this time the tradition of civil society's rejection of Guatemalan rulers turning to the army to control social disorders was suddenly interrupted. Many sectors of society criticized the police for not repressing the demonstration, despite the challenge of the FRG to public order did not claim direct victims, since the only death reported was that of Noti-7 and Radio Sonora reporter Héctor Ramírez, who died of a heart attack while covering the events.

Later investigations would have verified that among the leaders of the riots were:^{[citation needed]}

• Juan Santa Cruz (diputate of the FRG).
• Julio Morales (candidate for the FRG).
• Ingrid Argueta Sosa (sobrina de Ríos Montt).
• Jorge Arévalo (FRG deputy).
• Leopoldo Cruz (FRG deputy).
• Carlos Hernández (son of the FRG deputy, Carlos Hernández Rubio).
• Waleska Sánchez (secretary of Zury Rios, the daughter of General Ríos Montt).
• Marco Antonio Polanco Paz.^{[chuckles]required]}

Dissolution of the Presidential General Staff

Portillo ended his presidency by publicly acknowledging that he had left several projects in the pipeline and that he was going through "very difficult" times; while the press disaffected his regime, accusing him of "anarchy", "incapacity" and "misrule". However, in the final stretch of his mandate, Portillo hurriedly undertook one of the pending tasks: the dissolution of the EMP: on September 24, 2003, Congress approved a law that abolished the Presidential General Staff (EMP) and transferred its official functions to the Secretariat of Administrative and Security Affairs (SAAS), and on October 29, a joyful Portillo presided over the ceremony of the formal dissolution of the body and the discharge of its five hundred members. However, it was discovered that more than the Half of the SAAS staff were made up of former EMP members whose status, whether civilian or military, was unclear, not to mention their personal file.

Persecution of government officials

At the inauguration of President Óscar Berger's administration, the senior staff of Alfonso Portillo's Government was subject to alleged persecution for having promoted corrupt acts; former President Portillo himself, after losing his immunity as a member of the Central American Parliament, escaped from Guatemala and took refuge in Mexico. The former vice president Juan Francisco Reyes spent several months in prison accused of intentional fraud against the State and the former Minister of Public Finance, Eduardo Weymann, was imprisoned for signing – when he was no longer an official – minutes that supported an alleged meeting of the Superintendency of Tax Administration in which the transfer of some 30 million quetzales that were stolen from the treasury would have been decided. At the same time, a purge of the State's controlling bodies occurred: the attorney general, Carlos de León, was removed from office; The Comptroller General of Accounts, Óscar Dubón Palma, was captured in Nicaragua after a failed escape and was later convicted of diverting public funds to finance the campaigns of opposition politicians and, after months of remaining in hiding, the Superintendent of Tax Administration, Marco Tulio Abadío, was captured and remains in prison awaiting public trial.

On May 10, 2004, Francisco Alvarado MacDonald appeared at the court where one of the complaints against him was being heard. After being investigated, he was left in prison, with bail of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars; Alvarado MacDonald entered the prison where several former government officials were already there, including Eduardo Weymann, Byron Barrientos and Carlos Wohllers.

Accusations and imprisonment

Portillo was accused of embezzlement and in accordance with the extradition treaty signed with Mexico on October 7, 2008, by means of a P.G.R. plane. Mexican, Alfonso Portillo was sent back to Guatemala, to be tried by the courts of that Central American country. Portillo managed to obtain parole, but tried to flee to Belize and was captured in Izabal in January 2010. The CICIG (International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala) was involved in the process against him; In fact, the CICIG was supported by the Constitutional Court of Guatemala to be a joint plaintiff in the case against it for the embezzlement of 120 million quetzales from the treasury. However, the evidence presented against him was not considered sufficient by the judge, who declared him innocent of the crimes reported against him.

Accusations in the United States

On January 25, 2010, the prosecutor of New York County, United States, Cyrus Vance Jr. formally accused the former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo of a crime of money laundering, of up to 200 million dollars, for which he requested his extradition to that country.

"Alfonso Portillo is accused of turning the office of the Presidency of Guatemala into his personal ATM," explained prosecutor Preet Bharara, who also highlighted that the former president betrayed "the trust of the people of his nation" with the execution of several systems with which he embezzled millions of dollars.

After initially evading the authorities, Portillo was captured on January 26, 2010 in Punta de Palma, Izabal, when he was supposedly preparing to flee through Amatique Bay to Belize, which is in question because it was the place less suitable for hiding from American justice.

Former President Portillo, through the Radio Sonora 96.9 FM network, denounced that the capture was part of a conspiracy by powerful sectors who did not like the policies during his Government.

Initially he was held in the zone 18 penitentiary center in Guatemala City. In February 2010 he was transferred to the Fraijanes 2 maximum security prison, but by order of the competent judge he was returned to the penitentiary center preventive of zone 18. On Friday, February 19, 2010, and for health reasons, he was transferred to the Military Medical Center, where he remained for a time, until by order of the competent judge he was transferred back to the preventive of the zone 18. He was in a cell next to sector 12, known as the former officials' sector.

Suicide of his first wife

On May 18, 2010, Portillo's first wife, María Eugenia Padua González, committed suicide in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Padua, a 46-year-old university professor from a wealthy family, was found dead in the living room of a house in Chilpancingo, capital and municipality of that state, with a shot to the head and a gun in his hand. Padua did not reside in Chilpancingo but she had come to visit a sister in recent days. Portillo made it known that he was shocked and hurt by the death of his ex-wife.

Trial in Guatemala for embezzlement of funds

On Monday, May 9, 2011, the sentence was handed down against the former president in the eleventh court, where he was acquitted along with the other two involved, Arévalo Lacs and Maza Castellanos, due to lack of evidence. The acquittal verdict of two of the three judges who made up the court that tried the former president was questioned by various sectors of Guatemalan society when it was discovered through surveillance cameras that one of the former president's defense lawyers had held talks with the husband. from one of the judges who acquitted Portillo. The Public Prosecutor's Office said it did not agree with the court's decision and announced plans to appeal the ruling, but the appeal was unsuccessful.

On Friday, August 26, 2011, the Constitutional Court of the Republic ruled that he should be extradited to the United States to defend himself against money laundering charges.

Extradition to the United States, imprisonment

On Friday, May 24, 2013, he was extradited to the United States. and on Tuesday, March 18, 2014, former President Portillo admitted his guilt in an appearance before federal judge James Patterson, thus managing to use the American judicial system in his favor so that a minimum sentence of just one year in prison was imposed.

Return to Guatemala after serving sentence

Portillo returned to Guatemala on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 after serving his prison sentence for the crime of conspiracy to launder money; He was released from Englewood Prison in Denver, Colorado and was greeted by his supporters at La Aurora International Airport. Subsequently, he refused to participate in the September 6, 2015 elections along with Alejandro Sinibaldi, after he resigned from the Patriota Party candidacy in April 2015 following the dismantling of the “La Línea” customs corruption network.

They deny his registration as a candidate for deputy

In May 2015 it was made public that Portillo would participate as a candidate for deputy for the national list of the ALL party, which nominated Lizardo Sosa as president. Portillo presented his file to the registry of citizens of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal so that he could be registered as a candidate for deputy to Congress for the ALL party. However, the TSE denied him registration in the first instance, arguing article 113 of the Political Constitution of the Republic, which indicates that "Guatemalans have the right to opt for jobs or public positions and for their granting they will only be based on well-founded reasons." on merits of capacity, suitability and honesty. The TSE Citizen Registry also denied registration of another fifteen people interested in being candidates for deputies.