Fugitive Mexican ex-Gov. Javier Duarte detained in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY >> Javier Duarte, the fugitive former governor of Mexico’s Veracruz state who is accused of running a corruption ring to pilfer from state coffers, was detained in Guatemala today.

A statement from Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office said Duarte was detained with the cooperation of Guatemalan police and the country’s Interpol office in the municipality of Panajachel, which is a picturesque tourist town on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala’s highlands.

It said he is wanted on suspicion of money laundering and organized crime, and prosecutors directed the Foreign Relations Department to request Duarte’s extradition via its Guatemalan counterpart.

Photos published in Mexican media showed a bespectacled Duarte, clad in a gray shirt and black jacket-vest, being escorted by Interpol agents.

Manuel Noriega, deputy director of Interpol in Guatemala, said Duarte was located at a hotel where he was staying with his wife. He was asked to leave his room, did so voluntarily and then was arrested without incident in the lobby.

Noriega said Duarte would be presented before a judge to consider his possible extradition.

Duarte was governor of Veracruz from 2010 until he left office Oct. 12, 2016, two months before the scheduled end of his term, saying he was doing so in order to face the allegations against him.

At the time he denied having links to phantom businesses that allegedly won state contracts, and said he had not stolen a single peso of state money or diverted government funds overseas.

“I don’t have foreign accounts,” he said last year. “I don’t have properties anywhere.”

Duarte promptly disappeared and had been sought by Mexican authorities ever since. Earlier this year Interpol issued a notice for his capture.

The Mexican government has found millions of dollars purportedly linked to Duarte, frozen more than 100 bank accounts and also seized property and businesses tied to the former governor. A reward of 15 million pesos ($730,000) had been offered for his capture.

The detention comes a week after Tomas Yarrington, the former governor of Mexico’s Tamaulipas state, was arrested in Italy, also on allegations of organized crime and money laundering.

Another ex-governor, Cesar Duarte of Chihuahua state, is also wanted on suspicion of corruption and is believed to have fled to El Paso, Texas. He is not related to Javier Duarte.

All three ex-governors were members of the ruling Institutional Revolution Party, or PRI, of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Javier Duarte became a powerful symbol of alleged corruption during mid-term elections last year in which the PRI lost several governorships, including Veracruz, that it had held uninterrupted since its founding in 1929.

Duarte has also been widely criticized for rampant violence in the state as drug cartels war for territory, and for the killings of at least 16 journalists in Veracruz during his six years in office.