Collectively Combating Kleptocracy - Guatemala: The La Línea Corruption Case and the Fight for Justice

Democracy That Delivers

In April of 2015, a telephone wiretap exposed Guatemala’s then-President Otto Pérez Molina, his Vice President Roxana Baldetti, and and other high-ranking officials in the tax and customs administration as having been part of a kleptocratic network involving fraud in customs revenues. The La Línea case, a reference to the wiretap, is known as one of the most high-profile corruption cases in the country’s history, enraging the people of Guatemala, who joined mass protests to demand accountability and dislodge kleptocracy.

Hugo Novales Contreras, a political researcher and advisor to the Bernardo Arévalo presidency and the Movimiento Semilla legislative bloc, joins the host, Max Levites (Senior Governance Specialist, International Republican Institute), to discuss the history and context of the La Línea case, and the driving motivations and results of collective action. Contreras’ insight into the case outlines the nature of Guatemala’s generational shift in how citizens view the role of the government, and how this turned into a mass movement to hold the country’s leaders to account. He also discusses the importance of international cooperation as one of many key successes of and lessons to take from this collective action movement.