Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo copped a plea Tuesday to taking $2.5 million in bribes in exchange for continuing to recognize Taiwan diplomatically.
Nearly a year after being extradited from his home country to face indictment in the United States, Portillo, Guatemala’s president from 2000 to 2004, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to a single count of money laundering conspiracy.
Portillo said that from December 1999 to August 2002, he received $2.5 million in bribes from the government of Taiwan. He also admitted working with some Guatemalan bankers and others to launder the cash through US banks.
In his plea allocution, he noted, “I understood that, in exchange for these payments, I would use my influence to have Guatemala continue to recognize Taiwan diplomatically.”
Prosecutors had previously accused Portillo of laundering tens of millions of dollars he looted from his impoverished nation — including $2.5 million that was supposed to buy library books for school kids.
But, at Tuesday’s hearing, he said the $2.5 million wasn’t intended for libraries but rather was “illegal payments from Taiwan.”
Portillo personally endorsed three $500,000 checks issued against an account at the International Bank of China in Manhattan, then deposited the cash in the Miami bank account of a Guatemalan bank controlled by “a close associate and political supporter,” court papers say.
From there, the money was funneled to bank accounts in Paris in the names of Portillo’s ex-wife and daughter, the indictment says.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said Portillo, 62, was “wrong” to “have thought his position of power prevented him from having to answer for accepting multimillion-dollar bribes to shape his country’s foreign policy, … embezzling money intended to benefit the Guatemalan people, and for using US banks to launder his ill-gotten funds.”
Portillo’s lawyer David Rosenfield called his client a “good and decent person” who “made a mistake — an aberration in an otherwise unblemished life.”