A crime ring that defrauded the Guatemalan national tax collection agency (SAT)

and customs office, and implicated high-level authorities in different government

institutions all the way up to Vice President Roxana Baldettis private secretary,
was dismantled on April 16th with the arrests of 22 people. Guatemalas Public
Prosecutors Office and the International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG) carried out the joint investigation, which immediately sparked
massive and ongoing public protest and political crisis. The VPs private secretary,
Juan Carlos Monzn Rojas, is still at large.
Corruption at the highest levels of government is not a new phenomenon
in Guatemala. To mention just one example, former President Alfonso Portillo was
extradited to the United States in May 2013, where he spent time in prison for
money laundering.
However, the latest scandals have generated an unprecedented level of public
outrage. An estimated 60,000 people took to the streets during one recent anticorruption rally, calling for Perez Molina's resignation. The series of protests
sparked by the corruption scandal have been a spontaneous and massive
expression of frustration in the capital and other parts of the country.