The Justice of Bolivia has issued this Friday house arrest for the former Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energies Mauricio Medinaceli, dismissed in April and arrested in the middle of this week for alleged irregularities in the purchase and introduction into the market of allegedly adulterated gasoline, in the process known as "garbage" gasoline.
The Sixth Anti-Corruption Court of La Paz has set a bail of 100,000 bolivianos (a little over 7,300 euros) for Medinaceli and has banned him from accessing the facilities of the Ministry of Hydrocarbons, the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), and other institutions involved in the case, according to reports from the newspaper "El Deber" and the network Unitel.
Additionally, the former minister will have to appear weekly at the Prosecutor's Office to undergo biometric control. During the hearing this Friday, after his detention for the alleged crimes of breach of duties and anti-economic conduct, he declared himself "not guilty."
"I am in charge of my mother, who is almost 80 years old and has a hip fracture, she has a prosthesis. In that sense, I cannot leave her abandoned because I am the only one who supports her. This is what I would like to add to the defense (supported by) my lawyer and declare myself innocent," he stated.
The Prosecutor's Office had requested six months of preventive detention for him, arguing that the former minister "failed to arrange for the adoption of extraordinary measures of coordination and institutional supervision to suspend the continuity of the distribution of the observed fuel, demand the immediate implementation of comprehensive quality controls, and coordinate with YPFB and ANH the execution of actions aimed at preventing the persistence of the marketing of fuel."
The arrest order was issued after a report from the special commission of the Chamber of Deputies of Bolivia pointed to Medinaceli, along with other officials, as a presumed implicated in the distribution of adulterated fuel, which would have damaged more than 70,000 vehicles by June, according to data from YPFB cited by the Bolivian network UNITEL.
At the beginning of April, the Bolivian government annulled the supply contracts for gasoline with the raw materials traders Vitol and Trafigura due to alleged quality problems with the fuel, a decision that came after a strike by public transporters in La Paz and El Alto due to the breakdowns caused in vehicles by the adulterated gasoline.