The president of Bolivia, Rodrigo Paz, has ratified this Monday José Armando Urioste as interim attorney general of the State, after his appointment by the Legislative Assembly, and has set him "four challenges" for the Public Ministry: "to recover its institutionality and credibility, to guarantee its independence, and to advance in its transformation."
Paz has emphasized in his official profiles the "importance of a Prosecutor's Office that acts based on the law and in service of the citizenry, independent of political, economic, or criminal interests."
The Bolivian vice president, Edmand Lara, has been the one to swear Urioste in and has assigned him the mission to "clean up the corruption that exists in the Prosecutor's Office" and to regain "trust in an institution questioned by allegations of extortion and corruption," in a context marked by the detention of former attorney general Róger Mariaca for his alleged links to drug trafficking.
During the event, conceived as a declaration against corruption and in defense of institutional autonomy, Lara delivered a speech reported by the Bolivian newspaper La Razón. "Your function, your mission, is to act with responsibility, above all with transparency, respecting the Constitution, respecting the law, due process, the presumption of innocence," stated the vice president.
Urioste has explained that he receives a Public Ministry battered by "extortion, persecution, and lack of institutionality," and has anticipated that in the 90 days that his interim mandate will last, he will try to "uncover the pot" to clarify what is happening within the entity.
"We are uncovering the pot and it is clear that it smells very bad," Urioste pointed out at the swearing-in ceremony. The new prosecutor has maintained that his appointment implies a "break with a system" that, he has denounced, tolerated "extortion and cover-up practices within the Public Ministry."
The jurist, with experience in the administration of justice, had already anticipated that he would promote a "legal audit" and a "reengineering of the Public Ministry." Likewise, he has denounced that appointments based on "nepotism" and "cronyism" persist, dynamics that, in his opinion, must be eradicated.
The election of Urioste as interim attorney general occurred after four failed votes in the Assembly, between Friday night and Saturday morning, in which the political forces could not reach a consensus. In the fifth round, only one candidate was presented and the vote was conducted by sign, raising hands. The secretary certified "more than two thirds" and, in this way, Urioste was appointed, according to the version of the Bolivian media El Deber.
The Prosecutor's Office of Bolivia maintains that the former attorney general of the State, Róger Mariaca, the former departmental prosecutor of Santa Cruz, Alberto Zeballos, the former superior prosecutor and former lawyer of former president Evo Morales, Martín Irusta, and the police major, Rubén Aparicio, would be part of an alleged network of protection for drug trafficking linked to the Uruguayan drug trafficker Sebastián Marset. All of them are in preventive detention and are being investigated for alleged crimes of criminal organization and trafficking of controlled substances.