SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, Bolivia — Fernando Cerimedo, the Argentine political consultant accused of ordering an ambush that left his former partner bleeding on a hotel driveway, will spend the next six months in a Bolivian prison cell while investigators build a case against him. A judge in Santa Cruz ruled Friday night, after a marathon hearing, that Cerimedo poses enough of a flight and evidence-tampering risk to be held for 180 days — the maximum Bolivian law allows at this stage — while prosecutors pursue an attempted-feminicide charge tied to the August 17 shooting of lawyer and political activist Nadia Beller.
What started as a violent attack on one woman has, in the space of a single week, pulled in a sitting vice president's public criticism of his own government, a second and unrelated corruption probe, allegations of a rogue police unit and drug-flight payoffs, and now commentary from the presidents of two other countries. Some of what's being alleged remains just that — allegations. But the pieces that have moved from claim to confirmed fact are enough on their own to make this one of the more consequential scandals to hit Bolivian politics in years.
