This three-part investigative series looks at how the last three winners of the presidency in Guatemala financed their campaigns using hidden funds from drug traffickers to big businessmen. This means of financing campaigns is, in the words of a famous prosecutor, the country’s “original sin.”
Illicit Campaign Financing in Guatemala
GUATEMALA
/
23 AUG 2018
Chapter 1
The Zetas, Drug Money and the Colom Campaign in Guatemala
ELITES AND CRIME
/
9 AUG 2018
In the first of three articles concerning illicit political contributions in Guatemala, we look at the 2007 presidential campaign of Álvaro Colom. Colom, the bookish former head of a prominent…
Chapter 2
Guatemala Politics and the Patriotic Party’s Theory of ‘Eternal Return’
ELITES AND CRIME
/
16 AUG 2018
Juan Carlos Monzón was in South Korea when his boss, Guatemala’s Vice President Roxana Baldetti, received the call that would change their two trajectories – intimately intertwined for the previous…
Chapter 3
President Jimmy Morales’ (and Guatemala’s) ‘Original Sin’
ELITES AND CRIME
/
23 AUG 2018
It was just five months after he’d been sworn in as president of Guatemala that Jimmy Morales was in trouble. The date was May 5, 2016, and an auditor appointed…
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About InSight Crime
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InSight Crime Events – Border Crime: The Northern Triangle and Tri-Border Area
ARGENTINA
/
25 JAN 2021
Through several rounds of extensive field investigations, our researchers have analyzed and mapped out the main illicit economies and criminal groups present in 39 border departments spread across the six countries of study – the Northern Triangle trio of Guatemala, Honduras, and El…
BRIEF
InSight Crime’s ‘Memo Fantasma’ Investigation Wins Simón Bolívar National Journalism Prize
COLOMBIA
/
20 NOV 2020
The staff at InSight Crime was awarded the prestigious Simón Bolívar national journalism prize in Colombia for its two-year investigation into the drug trafficker known as “Memo Fantasma,” which was…
ANALYSIS
InSight Crime – From Uncovering Organized Crime to Finding What Works
COLOMBIA
/
12 NOV 2020
This project began 10 years ago as an effort to address a problem: the lack of daily coverage, investigative stories and analysis of organized crime in the Americas. …
ANALYSIS
InSight Crime – Ten Years of Investigating Organized Crime in the Americas
FEATURED
/
2 NOV 2020
In early 2009, Steven Dudley was in Medellín, Colombia. His assignment: speak to a jailed paramilitary leader in the Itagui prison, just south of the city. Following his interview inside…
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