On Thursday, Bolivia’s Attorney General, Roger Mariaca, was arrested by Bolivia’s authorities along with Santa Cruz province prosecutor Alberto Zeballos.
The arrest comes just two days after the U.S. State Department announced the cancellation of visas for both officials, as well as 20 other Bolivian personalities.
Washington made the decision by considering that both Mariaca and the other people on the list were involved in corruption cases, had links with drug trafficking and had attempted to undermine the institutionality of the current government.
And in fact, they pointed out directly to Mariaca, about whom they said he had received “bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and help violent offenders evade justice.”
According to news agencies EFE and AFP, Bolivian authorities arrested the two officials while they were at Santa Cruz de la Sierra International Airport.
The Communications Office of the Prosecutor General of Bolivia issued a message in which it described the arrest as “illegal”.
“We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being made illegally,” Claudia Pardo, head of communications of the Prosecutor’s Office, said in a live broadcast of the institution’s social networks.
Until now, the official reasons for the arrest of Mariaca are not known. However, the prosecutor himself rejected the US decision. He called it a clear “interference” in his work as a researcher.
“I was surprised by the decision, but I respect it as a decision that each nation adopts within its own competence and jurisdiction,” Mariaca explained at a press conference on Tuesday.
“H, I expect the same respect for our country, its institutions and its authorities,” he added.
He added that he rejected the accusations that were made against him and that he would not allow “that his life sheet be stained with accusations that he does not have the corresponding instance to clarify them.”
Mariaca had gained notoriety in recent years by cases such as the capture of Uruguayan drug dealer Sebastián Marcet and the accusation of attempted murder against political consultant Fernando Cerimedo (who worked on Javier Milei's campaign in Argentina), among other facts.
Prosecutor Mariaca began his career as a lawyer in various cases in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the second most populous city in Bolivia.
In that framework, he made his first encounter with a case that would mark him for the rest of his career: that of Uruguayan narcotraficant Sebastián Marset.
In July 2023, in a major police operation, Marset—which was already recognized as one of the country’s leading drug traffickers and which had its base in Santa Cruz—has managed to escape the siege of the authorities.
Some officials within Luis Arce’s government pointed out regional prosecutors, including Mariaca, as responsible for the capo’s escape.
The prosecutor rejected the accusation and said it had been an investigation by the Santa Cruz prosecutor’s office that led to the operation.
In 2024, thanks to the vote in the National Assembly - at that time controlled by the officialism of the now-ex-president Arce and the Movement to Socialism (MAS) - Mariaca became prosecutor general.
His first test of fire was precisely the capture of Marset, in March of this year, who was the most wanted person in the country.
However, opposition militants posted videos allegedly from the time of the capture in which the drug dealer said that “Mariaca is my friend.”
So far, the video has not been verified by any local or international media.
After that, in August this year, Nadia Beller, a renowned lawyer who had been the wife of Argentine political adviser Fernando Cerimedo, suffered a sicarial attack to which she survived despite receiving five shots.
From the hospital bed, Beller directly accused Cerimedo, who worked as an adviser to Bolivia's current president, Rodrigo Paz, of ordering his assassination.
Immediately Mariaca began the investigation to determine the counselor’s responsibility.
Cerimedo was known as one of the brains of Javier Milei's campaigns in Argentina and Paz in Bolivia, among others. He was accused of spreading false information on social media for election purposes.
Several media outlets have pointed out its connection with the Donald Trump administration. In fact, the American newspaper The Washington Post published an extensive report on Cerimedo titled “He Impulsed MAGA in Latin America and now is accused of ordering a murder.”
In the midst of the searches, the Prosecutor’s Office had initiated a preliminary investigation against the first lady of Bolivia, María Elena Urquidi, as a result of the investigation against the political adviser, but this was rejected by Mariaca himself.
The Bolivian government on Tuesday requested the U.S. government to hand over the information it had against its attorney general to initiate the corresponding investigations.
“The request has already been made. We have full control over the things we do from Bolivia. Honestly, I do not know the protocol and diplomatic response times of another State, but we have requested that it be as quickly as possible,” President José Luis Galvez told the media.
