The president of Brazil and candidate for reelection, Jair Bolsonaro, announced Thursday that former Bolivian Defense Minister Fernando Lopez is in Brazil as a «politically persecuted».
«The Bolivian Minister of Defense was also sentenced to 10 years (as Jeanine Áñez), but he came to Brazil, I guaranteed his presence here. As long as I am president, he does not leave Brazil. The same thing also happened with the head of the Bolivian National Guard (Yuri Calderón) and many other people who fled from there,» he said.
After these words, the former Bolivian president Evo Morales has pointed out in his official Twitter profile that these actions by the Brazilian president are «interference in Bolivia’s internal affairs».
«We repudiate Bolsonaro’s statements that in addition to representing interference in Bolivia’s internal affairs demonstrate the execution of a 21st Century Condor Plan by right-wing governments in the 2019 coup. It is inadmissible for a government to offer impunity to coup perpetrators,» he explained.
López, a fugitive from Justice due to corruption accusations, already indicated through his lawyer last April that he will not return to Bolivia until «the political situation does not change» in the Latin American country.
The former minister is on the run from Bolivian Justice, accused in the framework of the ‘Coup d’Etat’ case, as well as for the massacres of Sacaba and Senkata in November 2019. Another lawsuit was filed against him in January for cost overruns in the purchase of tear gas for the security forces in the framework of the repressions of the mandate of former president Jeanine Áñez.
The investigation alleges that during that period, $2.3 million was spent at public expense on the purchase of anti-riot equipment from Bravo Tactical Solutions LCC in the United States.
For this last case, Arturo Murillo, Áñez’s former ‘number two’, was arrested in Miami, for crimes of money laundering and criminal association. Along with them, half a dozen former officials of that self-proclaimed interim government were accused.
