Pubdate: Tue, 25 Feb 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: David Gonzalez

GRAFT AGGRAVATES WOES PLAGUING CENTRAL AMERICA

GUATEMALA CITY - Long a mainstay of politics and business in Central 
America, corruption has taken on new life under the region's fledgling 
democracies and is more pervasive and corrosive than at any time in recent 
memory, analysts and diplomats say.

For the most vulnerable countries, like Guatemala, barely six years from 
civil war, the problem is making it more difficult to consolidate law and 
order and gain popular trust in government.

For the United States it is undermining the fight against drugs, contraband 
and illegal immigrants as politicians and former military officers who had 
been built up as cold war allies now trade on their influence to enrich 
themselves.

In January, Washington "decertified" Guatemala as a cooperative partner in 
the antidrug effort, a step that jeopardized millions of dollars in foreign 
aid and further tarnished Guatemala's image with investors.

"I think it the most corrupt country right now," said Manuel Orozco, 
Central America project director at the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy 
group in Washington.

The Guatemalan government, angered by the American decision, insists that 
the problem goes beyond drug trafficking - and beyond Guatemala - and that 
American officials have been inattentive to an issue that is nibbling away 
at efforts to generate trade and lift large swaths of the region out of 
poverty.

Indeed, Guatemala is hardly alone. Half of Central America's countries 
dwell in the bottom 20 percent of Transparency International's annual 
rankings of the most corrupt countries in which to conduct business.

In Honduras, millions of aid dollars sent for rebuilding efforts after 
Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998 have gone unaccounted for, while rural 
poverty and despair have increased.

Last year prosecutors in Nicaragua, one of the hemisphere's poorest 
countries, accused former President Arnoldo Aleman of stealing $100 million 
from the government. The shock felt by many Nicaraguans was compounded by 
the Nicaraguan Congress's slowness to lift the immunity that Mr. Aleman 
enjoyed as a legislator. He is now under house arrest awaiting trial.

In Panama, a country whose freewheeling economy has long been favored by 
those seeking to hide or channel illicit funds, corruption is nearly taken 
for granted.

Last year an opposition legislator, Carlos Afu, was accused by his own 
party of accepting $1.5 million for his vote to confirm two Supreme Court 
justices. He defended himself by appearing on television waving $6,000 in 
$100 bills that he said promoters had just paid him to approve their 
development project. The message: everyone here sells his vote.

Instead of being prosecuted as a confessed bribe taker, Mr. Afu, who now 
votes with the government, has been rewarded with a committee chairmanship.

The Bush administration announced last year that it would make 
anticorruption efforts a condition for foreign aid increases. But the 
difficulty of withholding aid from governments in a poor region that has 
become a popular smuggling route was demonstrated when Washington waived 
penalties on national security grounds after it decertified Guatemala.

Guatemala presents a special challenge. By most measures it has not only 
the region's widest gap between rich and poor, but an everyday tolerance 
for corruption at almost all levels of government and business.

Carlos Gonzalez, a law student here, learned just how ingrained it had 
become when a police officer stopped him one night for no apparent reason, 
frisked him and asked about the cellphone he was carrying.

"He asked where the receipt was," Mr. Gonzalez recalled. "Of course, I 
didn't have it. So he told me the phone was stolen and was staying with 
him. Where can you go to complain about something like this - to the police?"

Not exactly. Byron Barrientos, the former minister of governance who 
oversaw the police, is himself facing allegations of having embezzled as 
much as $13 million. Though no longer in office, he remains in government, 
as a member of Congress, joining some 20 other lawmakers embroiled in scandals.

"Corruption is a matter of double standard," Foreign Minister Edgar 
Gutierrez said in response to written questions. "Everyone points fingers, 
but few are willing to point fingers, combat and do away with corruption in 
their own profession or sector."

The big money, diplomats and human rights advocates say, is being made by a 
shadowy smuggling network of former military officers.

The group is a holdover from Guatemala's 36-year civil war with leftist 
guerrillas, when regional military commanders controlled lucrative 
businesses in illegal logging or amassed sprawling properties.

Now, as they adjust to the peace brought about by accords signed in 
December 1996, they are seeking other ways to secure their futures in 
retirement.

In addition, prosecutors say that about $100 million has been stolen by 
various high-ranking officials, some of whom have fled the country. Last 
year, in their frustration, American officials resorted to revoking 
numerous visas to block suspected criminals from doing business in or 
fleeing to the United States.

Among those whose visas were blocked was Francisco Ortega Menaldo, a former 
general whom American officials suspect of ties to drug trafficking and 
human rights abuses.

American officials increasingly suspect that security breaches are tipping 
off drug gangs to raids by the United States Drug Enforcement 
Administration. One of the biggest scandals last year involved the 
disappearance of 1.6 tons of cocaine from police custody and the subsequent 
disbanding of the country's antinarcotics squad.

Even in cases in which arrests have been made, suspects often go free. 
"Basically, all the sectors of law enforcement, the judiciary, the Public 
Ministry and the police have all been either bought off, penetrated or 
intimidated," said one diplomat.

Prosecutors are investigating five men who were once among the country's 
highest-ranking army officers in connection with smuggling of drugs and people.

But prosecutors complain that they are fearful, intimidated and 
underbudgeted as they have been inundated by more than 2,400 corruption 
cases since 2000. Distrustful of even the police, they find themselves 
staking out suspects on their own.

Karen Fischer, the special prosecutor for corruption, suspects compliant 
judges of putting up judicial roadblocks to delay or derail some cases. 
Even at the bottom of the bureaucratic chain, prosecutors and others find 
that clerks demand bribes simply to move paperwork.

"You have to fight with the court to not release people," Ms. Fischer said. 
"You have to fight with the police to bring them in. The problem of 
corruption in Guatemala is so spread out."

Under growing pressure, the government has set up an anticorruption 
commission to look at issues of inefficiency and official impunity, which 
are of special interest to international donors and lenders who will be 
meeting in May to review Guatemala's progress.

"Corruption in Guatemala is a type of social pathology that should be 
analyzed by a sociologist or psychiatrist," said Elfidio Cano, a member of 
the panel. "It has become a culture that legitimizes itself."
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