The court sentenced Arturo Murillo to 70 months in prison after finding him guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering.
According to a statement from the US Department of Justice, former interior minister of Bolivia Arturo Murillo has been given a sentence of nearly six years in prison for conspiring to commit money laundering.
Murillo admitted to receiving at least $532,000 in bribes from a Florida-based company in October in return for assisting it in obtaining a lucrative tear gas contract with Bolivia’s defence ministry. He pleaded guilty to the charges.
The department claimed that he had used the US financial system to launder the money.
Murillo was sentenced to 70 months in prison by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Another former Bolivian official and three Americans were sentenced in the US last June after they also pleaded guilty to roles in the same scheme, the department said.
A former senator, Murillo served as interior minister between 2019 and 2020 during the interim government of President Jeanine Anez, who took power following political turmoil that led to President Evo Morales resigning and leaving the country.
Murillo fled after Morales’s party retook power in 2020 and was arrested in Florida in May 2021.
Bolivia’s government has requested Murillo’s extradition to Bolivia, where he faces a host of criminal charges.
Bolivian Attorney General Wilfredo Chavez said in a news conference that Murillo’s sentencing would advance extradition proceedings and that the government would take legal action to be paid $532,000 “as a victim” of Murillo’s crime.
“Justice has spoken in the United States. We are satisfied with this judicial decision, and we are going to make efforts for judicial actions [of extradition],” said Chavez.
Murillo’s former boss Anez is serving a 10-year prison sentence for her role in what Bolivian authorities say was a coup that forced Morales out of office in 2019.