MIAMI — A former minister in the Bolivian government who has been in federal custody since 2021 was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Wednesday for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes through a Miami bank in exchange for steering an inflated tear-gas contract to a South Florida company.
Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic, 59, admitted as part of his plea agreement in Miami federal court that he received at least $532,000 in bribe payments from a Broward-based company so it could land a $5.6 million contract to supply tear gas and other non-lethal equipment to the Bolivian Ministry of Defense in 2019.
But the actual tear gas deal — obtained by the former conservative official to combat socialist protesters in Bolivia — cost only $3.3 million, with the balance of about $2.3 million used for profits and bribes, federal prosecutors said.
Murillo’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday was highly unusual. It was held behind closed doors after his defense attorney, Ana Davide, asked U.S. District Judge Paul Huck to remove other defendants in the case, their lawyers and others, including a Miami Herald reporter, from the courtroom. Citing safety concerns, Davide said that she needed to talk discreetly with the judge about her client’s cooperation with prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office and Justice Department, including Murillo’s assistance in ongoing criminal investigations unrelated to the tear gas case.
Huck closed his courtroom on Wednesday for nearly an hour to all of the other parties except Murillo, his defense attorney, and the federal prosecutors. Afterward, during a subsequent hearing involving proposed sentence reductions for three other defendants in the case, Huck revealed Murillo’s prison term. He was facing up to 10 years on his money-laundering conspiracy conviction, though it was unclear how much his cooperation with federal authorities contributed to his nearly six-year prison term.
Prosecutors said Murillo conspired with his chief of staff and three other Bolivian officials, while the government minister received “bundles of U.S. currency” in Bolivia and the Miami area in connection with the tear gas contract — including $130,000 in cash payments at a family member’s home in the suburb of Doral.
“When questioned by law enforcement [before his arrest in Doral], the defendant lied, stating that he did not receive any proceeds and had nothing to do with the tear gas contract,” prosecutors Eli Rubin and Jill Simon said in court papers seeking the maximum 10-year sentence.
Four other men implicated in the corruption scheme to sell tear gas to the Bolivian government were sentenced in June 2022 to prison terms of roughly two to four years. On Wednesday, Huck slightly reduced the terms of three of them after prosecutors recommended that they be given credit for their cooperation against Murillo.
Bolivian police used the tear gas — sold at inflated prices along with kickbacks to government officials — to quell supporters of socialist leader Evo Morales during street protests after he resigned as president following a disputed election in 2019.
At the center of the foreign corruption scheme was Murillo, the former Bolivian minister of government. He was a cabinet member in the conservative administration that briefly replaced Morales’ socialist administration.
Murillo was arrested in May 2021 at a home in Doral on conspiracy and money laundering charges accusing him of accepting more than $500,000 in kickbacks from the South Florida tear-gas supplier, Bravo Tactical Solutions, between November 2019 and April 2020.
The other four defendants named as co-conspirators pleaded guilty in 2021 and have cooperated with federal prosecutors in the case against Murillo. They are: Sergio Rodrigo Mendez Mendizabal, the minister’s former chief of staff, convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 42 months. Mendizabal, who admitted that he accepted a $150,000 payment from Murillo as part of the tear gas deal, has started his prison term. Prosecutors have recommended that his prison term be reduced by one-third, but Huck did not rule on that request Wednesday.
The other defendants include Bryan Berkman, CEO of Bravo Tactical Solutions in Tamarac, who was convicted of foreign corruption and sentenced to 28 months in prison and 36 months of home confinement. Huck reduced his prison term by 25% on Wednesday, though his attorney, Michael Nadler, sought more time off for his cooperation.
His father, Luis Berkman, of Georgia, was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 38 months in prison and 16 months of home confinement. His prison time was cut by 15% based on the prosecutors’ recommendation. His lawyer, Joseph DeMaria, said he accepted this reduction based on an evaluation of the case.
And Philip Lichtenfeld, a U.S. citizen, was convicted of foreign corruption and sentenced to 26 months of prison and ordered to pay a $75,000 fine. His prison term was decreased by 25%, though his lawyer, Frank Schwartz, sought more time off.
Huck, the judge, said he was not willing to give the three defendants greater sentence reductions, while noting “these were pretty good people who did a bad thing.”
The Berkmans and Lichtenfeld must soon surrender to prison authorities to start their terms.
Bryan Berkman, Luis Berkman, and Litchtenfeld were accused of paying more than $1 million in kickbacks to Murillo, Mendez and two other Bolivian officials to obtain the tear-gas defense contract with the conservative government of former interim Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez.
“They laundered the bribe proceeds and illicit gains through bank accounts in the United States, Bolivia, and Singapore, and arranged the delivery of cash bribes in Miami, Florida, and Cochabamba, Bolivia, ” Rubin, the prosecutor, wrote in a sentencing memo. “And in the process, they enriched themselves handsomely by committing serious, calculated crimes.”
In Miami federal court, the four defendants signed factual statements as part of their plea agreements, admitting to the following scheme: Between March and April of 2021, Bryan Berkman, Luis Berkman, Lichtenfeld, Murillo and Mendez arranged for the Central Bank of Bolivia to transfer about $5.6 million to Bravo Tactical Solutions.
In turn, the South Florida company wired about $3.3 million of those proceeds to a bank account in Brazil to pay the actual manufacturer of the tear gas under Bravo’s defense contract with the Bolivian government. The huge difference — about $2.3 million — accounted for Bravo’s inflated defense contract covering a split of both profits and bribes, according to Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. attorney’s office.
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