Ex-Guatemalan minister sentenced to one year for role in paying bribes through Miami bank

A former top Guatemalan official was sentenced Monday to one year in prison after pleading guilty to paying hefty bribes to Guatemalan politicians through the U.S. banking system to gain support for telecommunications contracts that benefited a company where he had worked as an executive.

Acisclo Valladares Urruela, the former economics minister in Guatemala, admitted that he transferred $350,000 in bribery payments to the unidentified Guatemalan politicians through two companies with bank accounts in Miami, according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement. Valladares agreed to forfeit $140,000 to the U.S. government as a penalty for moving the dirty money into those accounts.

Valladares, 46, who pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to commit money laundering, was facing up to five years in prison in Miami federal court. Prosecutor Walter Norkin recommended half that sentence because of his substantial assistance in the foreign corruption case, while his defense attorney Dan Gelber argued for even less time behind bars.

U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez, despite openly lamenting Miami’s reputation as the “fraud capital of the world,” then decided to give the former government minister the one-year sentence.

Valladares spoke for 10 minutes during his sentencing as he apologized to the judge, U.S. justice system, and his immediate family members gathered in court. He said that he paid the bribes to the Guatemalan politicians while he was working for the country’s biggest telecommunications company because he wanted to be considered a “valuable” employee. He said he did so out of “self-interest,” but that he did not receive any extra money other than his corporate salary.

“I knew it was wrong,” Valladares said, adding that he has told his four children about his crime to teach them right from wrong. “I regret that I am teaching them this lesson with my own failings.”

Valladares paid the illegal bribes on behalf of a telecommunications company known as Tigo, for which he had worked as a corporate officer before his stint as a government minister. As a result of the payoffs, Guatemalan politicians passed a law that paved the way for the telecommunications company to obtain a series of lucrative government contracts in Guatemala, according to court records. The corrupt dealings allowed Valladares to benefit personally and politically, U.S. authorities said.

Valladares, who was also an attorney in Guatemala, did not act alone, according to the factual statement filed with his plea agreement. Starting in 2014, before Valladares became Guatemala’s economics minister, “senior executives” at the telecommunications company “directed” him “to obtain cash to be used for the benefit of” his employer, which the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald have learned is Tigo.

“To carry out the executives’ instructions, [Valladares] agreed with others to engage in a series of transactions that benefited [Tigo] and that involved both Guatemalan and U.S. financial institutions,” the statement says.

Although he is not mentioned by name in any court records, Tigo’s president is Mario Lopez Estrada, a civil engineer who is known as Guatemala’s first billionaire.

The reason federal prosecutors were able to make the criminal case against Valladares is that some of the tainted money from the corruption activity was wired in late 2017 through the two Miami companies’ accounts and then back to Guatemalan politicians, according to court records. Prosecutors and the FBI were able to make the money-laundering case against the former government minister because they obtained critical assistance from two co-conspirators in the investigation, which was called “Operation Black Mass.”

But Valladares’ defense team said he stood apart from the two other defendants — former Guatemalan politician Manuel Antonio Baldizon Mendez and Guatemalan banker Alvaro Estuardo Cobar Bustamante — who were convicted of money laundering and received prison sentences of more than two years.

Unlike them, Valladares voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities in 2020 after traveling with a “coyote,” or guide through Mexico because “he believed it was the right thing to do,” said his attorney, Gelber, who handled the defense with partners Gerald Greenberg and Barabara Llanes.

According to his plea deal, Valladares has cooperated with federal investigators and prosecutors and might qualify for a visa to stay in the United States after he completes his prison term. He would have to show that his life would be in danger if he were deported to Guatemala.

Norkin, the prosecutor, said Valladares has pledged to continue his cooperation while he remains free on bail until he surrenders to prison authorities in January 2023.

The factual statement filed with Valladares’ plea agreement lacks details about where he obtained the money to pay the bribes to the Guatemalan politicians.

But Gelber, his defense attorney, said the money did not come from drug-trafficking proceeds as the FBI suggested in a prior criminal complaint.

The previous FBI criminal complaint accused Valladares, who served as Guatemala’s economics minister between 2016-20 in the administration of President Jimmy Morales, of using cocaine profits to make the bribery payments.

But Valladares did not plead guilty to that allegation at his plea hearing in July.

The original criminal complaint, filed by the FBI in August 2020, was intended only for the arrest of Valladares, who would later agree not to be charged by a federal grand-jury indictment. Instead, he was charged by an information, which is customary in many plea deals with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.

Meanwhile, Valladares is wanted by authorities in Guatemala for his role in alleged government corruption stemming from bribes paid by him and Tigo.

In Guatemala, both United Nations and Guatemalan government investigators are running parallel probes of allegations of corruption and bribery involving Tigo, Valladares, other company executives and Guatemalan politicians.

According to news reports, some bodyguards for Guatemalan politicians testified that they had carried cash from sources at Tigo to Guatemalan politicians to gain support for the company’s government contracts — including the Central American nation’s former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, who is in prison after being convicted in an unrelated corruption case.