The US Justice sentences former Bolivian Minister Arturo Murillo to 70 months in prison for corruption

The US Justice has sentenced this Wednesday the former Bolivian Government Minister Arturo Murillo to 70 months (5.8 years) in prison for corruption and money laundering.

The United States Department of Justice has indicated that the former minister conspired "to launder bribes he received in exchange for corruptly helping a US company win a lucrative contract with the Bolivian government."

Reports indicate that Murillo received at least $532,000 (502,000 euros) in bribery payments from a Florida-based company, with the aim of getting the company a $5.6 million (5.3 million euros) contract. ) to promote equipment to the Ministry of Defense.

Contrary to the statement published on the website of the US Department of Justice, the Bolivian State Attorney General, Wilfredo Chávez, has indicated that Murillo has been sentenced to 7 years in prison, as he has published on his official Twitter profile.

Chávez has indicated that this sentence puts an end to the process, because it is final, and therefore, from now on, the extradition process of the former minister, detained in Miami since May 2021, will move forward.

The Minister of Government, Eduardo Del Castillo, has also reacted to the sentence. "Demonstrating once again that the denunciations that we made as the National Government were true," he said on Twitter, adding that "the coup was not only to seize power and murder our people," but also "to loot and rob" the state.

Murillo --convicted in October 2022 of the crimes of international bribery and money laundering, like his accomplices-- was in his ministerial position during the term of Jeanine Áñez, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for the case 'coup d'état II', in which she was accused of acting against the Bolivian Constitution when she proclaimed herself president of the nation in 2019.