Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday.
His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police.
The police have not commented on the alleged detention, but the vice-president, Edmand Lara, posted a video on social media congratulating a specialist police unit “for having apprehended Luis Arce, in compliance with a resolution issued by a prosecutorial authority”.
Arce served as Bolivia’s president until last November, when he handed over the sash to the centre-right former senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, who won the runoff in an election that ended nearly 20 years of dominance by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).
Lara added: “We said that Luis Arce would be the first to go to prison, and we are delivering. Everyone who has stolen from this country will return every last cent and be held to account.” The vice-president is a former police officer who became famous on TikTok for making alleged corruption accusations.
The state broadcaster Bolivia TV posted that Arce was “giving a statement before” the police “while staff from the office of the ombudsman accompany him”. It noted the involvement of the Special Force to Fight Crime’s department for the investigation of illicit gains.
Outside the headquarters of the FELCC in the capital, La Paz, where the former president had supposedly been taken, Tejada told journalists she was trying to enter the building to obtain more information.
She said Arce “was alone” in the Sopocachi neighbourhood of La Paz, when he was allegedly “put into a minibus with blacked-out windows” and taken to the FELCC.
“I’m arriving now to find out … No, there was no notification of any kind, and I’m coming to see under what procedures they brought him here,” she added.
Tejada said she learned from “unofficial sources” that the reason for the detention “would be the Indigenous fund case”, referring to a government fund intended to channel part of hydrocarbon tax revenues into development projects for Indigenous peoples.
During the early years of the administration of the former president Evo Morales, under whom Arce served as finance minister, Bolivia experienced astonishing growth, lifting thousands out of poverty – particularly many Indigenous and rural communities – thanks to a natural gas boom.
The “Indigenous fund” was shut down in 2015 after a corruption scandal involving the alleged misappropriation of resources.
Investigations were revived after Paz Pereira took office – the president established at least 10 commissions to audit and investigate Mas administrations, one of them focused on the “Indigenous fund”.
Last Friday, the former Mas deputy Lidia Patty was also arrested by the FELCC. She is accused of having received, in her personal account, funds for the execution of projects that were never carried out.
Local media reported that, in the request for Arce’s detention, the public prosecutor Miguel Ángel Cardozo alleged that when Arce was economy minister he had “violated existing regulations by authorising the transfer of public funds into personal accounts”.
