The president of Bolivia’s Supreme Court of Justice, Romer Saucedo, announced on Wednesday (the 4th) that he had left the country a day after the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued against him an arrest warrant for “trafficking in controlled substances and criminal association.” The court is the highest instance of Bolivian ordinary justice. Constitutional matters are handled by the Plurinational Constitutional Court.
In a post on X, Saucedo said he had taken the “hardest decision of his life” and that he would be more useful outside Bolivia than “being in prison or dead.” “I have left the country and I am with my entire family in exile,” he wrote. He accused Rodrigo Paz’s government of “attempts at persecution and intimidation.” “I know they will forge evidence to discredit me,” he added.
The interim Attorney General, José Armando Urioste, appointed by Congress after the arrest of his predecessor, did not detail Saucedo’s involvement in the crimes.
According to Urioste, the investigations “will follow their course,” and they are being kept confidential because they involve the cooperation of witnesses. The whereabouts of the 38-year-old magistrate are unknown.
Urioste also indicated that Saucedo returned to Bolivia this week, after traveling abroad, and that there is no migratory record of a new departure. Therefore, the Prosecutor’s Office suspects that he left the country by land.
The office will request Interpol to issue a Red Notice for an international search. “We must activate these international alerts to prevent him from leaving or entering Bolivia,” he said.
According to Rodrigo Paz, Saucedo “is leaving the country because there is a series of accusations or investigations into our model of the judiciary system.” The remark was made at a business meeting in Spain before the Ibero-American Summit. The Deputy Interior Minister, Peter Maldonado, linked the escape to the case of former Attorney General Roger Mariaca. “Many of Mariaca’s accomplices and criminals are on the run,” he told local press.
Since October, several high-ranking Bolivian judiciary officials have been arrested for alleged ties to drug trafficking. Mariaca was detained days after the United States canceled his visa, and after other officials and businessmen from Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador.
The U.S. government accuses the former prosecutor of taking bribes to “facilitate drug trafficking and help violent criminals escape justice.” On Wednesday afternoon, the judges of the Bolivian court named Dean Rosmery Ruiz as interim president, in light of Saucedo’s temporary absence.
