Ex-Bolivian minister admits to taking bribes, steering tear-gas contract to Florida firm

A former minister in the Bolivian government pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes through a Miami bank in exchange for steering an inflated tear-gas contract to a South Florida company.

Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic, 58, admitted in Miami federal court that he received at least $532,000 in bribe payments from a Broward-based company so it could secure a $5.6 million contract to provide tear gas and other non-lethal equipment to the Bolivian Ministry of Defense. Murillo received at least $130,000 in cash bribes through his Miami bank accounts, according to prosecutors.

Murillo, represented by defense attorney Ana Davide, faces up to 10 years in prison on his money-laundering conviction before U.S. District Judge Paul Huck.

Four other men implicated in the corruption scheme to sell tear gas to the Bolivian government were sentenced in June to prison terms of roughly two to four years.

Bolivian police used the tear gas — sold at inflated prices along with kickbacks to government officials — to quell supporters of socialist leader Evo Morales during street protests after he resigned as president following a disputed election in 2019.

At the center of the foreign corruption scheme was Murillo, the former Bolivian minister of government. He was a cabinet member in the conservative administration that briefly replaced Morales’ socialist administration. Murillo was arrested in 2021 at a home in Doral on conspiracy and money-laundering charges accusing him of accepting more than $500,000 in kickbacks from the South Florida tear-gas supplier, Bravo Tactical Solutions, between November 2019 and April 2020.

The other four defendants named as co-conspirators pleaded guilty last year and have cooperated with federal prosecutors in the case against Murillo.

They are: Sergio Rodrigo Mendez Mendizabal, the minister’s former chief of staff, convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 42 months; Bryan Berkman, CEO of Bravo Tactical Solutions in Tamarac, convicted of foreign corruption and sentenced to 28 months in prison and 36 months of home confinement; his father, Luis Berkman, of Georgia, convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 38 months in prison and 16 months of home confinement; and Philip Lichtenfeld, a U.S. citizen, who was convicted of foreign corruption and sentenced to 26 months of prison and ordered to pay a $75,000 fine.

Bryan Berkman, Luis Berkman, and Litchtenfeld were accused of paying more than $1 million in kickbacks to Murillo, Mendez and two other Bolivian officials to obtain the tear-gas defense contract with the conservative government of former interim Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez.

“They laundered the bribe proceeds and illicit gains through bank accounts in the United States, Bolivia, and Singapore, and arranged the delivery of cash bribes in Miami, Florida, and Cochabamba, Bolivia, ” federal prosecutor Eli Rubin wrote in a sentencing memo. “And in the process, they enriched themselves handsomely by committing serious, calculated crimes.”

Rubin sought the maximum prison sentences for each of the four defendants — 10 years for Luis Berkman and Mendez, and five years for Bryan Berkman and Lichtenfeld — but Judge Huck was not persuaded.

In Miami federal court, the four defendants signed factual statements as part of their plea agreements, admitting to the following scheme:

Between March and April of last year, Bryan Berkman, Luis Berkman, Lichtenfeld, Murillo and Mendez arranged for the Central Bank of Bolivia to transfer about $5.6 million to Bravo Tactical Solutions. In turn, the South Florida company wired about $3.3 million of those proceeds to a bank account in Brazil to pay the actual manufacturer of the tear gas under Bravo’s defense contract with the Bolivian government.

The huge difference — about $2.4 million — accounted for Bravo’s inflated defense contract covering a split of both profits and bribes, according to Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.