Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina resigns amid corruption scandal
Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina resigned on Thursday, after an arrest warrant was issued earlier in the morning.
Presidential spokesman Jorge Ortega said Perez submitted his resignation at midnight local time, after a judge issued an arrest warrant against him in connection to a growing corruption scandal.
Perez stepped down to "confront the proceedings against him"
Ortega added that Perez had decided to step down to "confront the proceedings against him".
Perez's resignation came a day after the country's Congress voted unanimously to remove his immunity from prosecution and days before the country held its presidential election.
Perez faces charges of fraud, illicit association and corruption related to a customs fraud ring that benefitiated companies in exchange for kickbacks, the country’s Attorney General Thelma Aldana told Guatemalan television station Canal Antigua on Wednesday.
In a televised adress to the nation last week he denied the charges, claiming he was a victim of his political enemies.
I categorically deny and reject the accusation
“I categorically deny and reject the accusation that I was involved (in a corruption scheme) and having received any money from that customs fraud scheme,” he said.
Guatemalan law establishes that the country's vice president Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre will take office to serve out Perez's term, whoich was set to end on 14 January 2016. Maldonado has been in office since mid-May, when his predecessor Roxana Baldetti resigned in connection with the customs scheme.
More than a dozen ministers, vice ministers and commissioners in the Perez administration resigned in recent weeks, and some of them even fled the country.
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