Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, this Tuesday after his indictment Esteban Biba (EFE)
Journalist José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico de Guatemala, was charged on Tuesday with money laundering charges brought against him by prosecutors. Zamora has been detained since July 29, when authorities ordered his arrest and a search of the newspaper’s offices, and will remain in pre-trial detention by order of the criminal judge handling the case. Founder, director and president of the newspaper critical of the government of Alejandro Giammatei, Zamora, is accused of money laundering, extortion and influence activities. The journalist has asserted that the entire trial is a “staging” ordered by the President, which he has pointed out in statements to this newspaper, that he has launched a political prosecution over his newspaper’s publications documenting abuses of power by the President and officials nearby.
The newspaper elPeriódico was founded in 1996 under the leadership of Zamora, a 66-year-old engineer. Over the past decade, the newspaper uncovered hundreds of acts of corruption in the governments of Otto Pérez Molina and his vice-president Roxana Baldetti (2012-2015), but also in the governments of Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) and Giammattei himself.
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