U.S. officials punish Guatemalan officials ahead of Harris meeting Corruption News

U.S. sanctions include a member of the Guatemalan Congress and a former senior presidential employee for alleged corruption.

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on a member of the Guatemalan Congress and the country’s former chief of staff for alleged corruption, and Washington is pressuring several Central American governments to oppose the graft.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris met with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei a few hours before the meeting to discuss the growth of Central American migration that has caused a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a statement, the U.S. Treasury Department said the list included Felipe Alejos Lorenzana, a delegate elected to the Guatemalan Congress, and Gustavo Adolfo Alejos Cambara, the chief of staff of former President Alvaro Colom.

“These sanctions support the efforts of the Guatemalan people to end the scourge of corruption, as part of the U.S. government’s commitment to making improvements in governance in Guatemala,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate note.

A U.S. senior official said last week that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is considering setting up a working group of U.S. Justice and State Department officials and other agencies to help local prosecutors deal with corruption in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Ricardo Zuniga, a special envoy from the three Central American countries, also told reporters that the U.S. government has authority from the U.S. Congress to work out lists of regional officials related to corruption, revoke travel visas, and impose economic sanctions.

Guatemalan lawmakers recently rejected a judge to fight corruption, Constitutional Court President Gloria Porras, whom U.S. officials saw as key to the country’s fight against the graft.

Monday’s move, which Washington said was coordinated with the UK, freezes U.S. blacklisted assets and bans Americans in general from dealing with them.

Blinken said Gustavo Adolfo Alejos Cambara and Felipe Alejos Lorenzana wanted to “obstruct the judicial selection process for the appointment of magistrates in the Guatemalan Supreme Court (CSJ) and the Courts of Appeal.”

Both have said they are influencing the process of selecting magistrates for the courts and trying to get court rulings that protect judges Alejos Cambara and CSJ from anti-corruption trials.