Gina Baldivieso
La Paz, December 12 (EFE).- Former President of Bolivia Luis Arce (2020-2025) was detained a month after leaving government over an investigation into alleged corruption in the management of a state fund for indigenous projects while he was a minister in the government of Evo Morales (2006-2019).
Arce will spend five months in prison in La Paz. The public prosecutor’s office accuses him of “dereliction of duty and uneconomic conduct” because he approved disbursements of funds from the so-called Indigenous Development Fund for Peasants and Livestock (Fondioc) for projects that were not implemented or were only partially implemented.
These payouts, made since 2009, when Arce Morales was economy minister, were made to private accounts of leaders of indigenous and peasant organizations linked to the then-ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party.
Arce (La Paz, 1963) is an economist with a degree from the state-run Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) and a master’s degree from the British University of Warwick.
A socialist activist since his youth, he developed his career at the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB) until he was sworn in as Minister of Economy in 2006 during the first term of Evo Morales, a position he held intermittently between 2017 and 2019 due to kidney cancer treated abroad.
Morales and the MAS identified him at the time as the manager of the so-called “economic miracle” through which Bolivia achieved unusual growth between 2006 and 2014, a breakthrough that Arce attributed to a model with the state as the protagonist, although for his critics it was due to a favorable external environment with high commodity prices.
In January 2020, the MAS announced Arce as its candidate for the legislative elections, which were repeated a year after the failed elections of 2019, which created a crisis that led to the resignation of Morales from the presidency, amid allegations of electoral fraud in his favor.
Arce and his running mate, the Aymara David Choquehuanca, won the 2020 elections with 55.1% of the vote, promising to revive an economy hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and, according to the economist, by the poor management of the interim government of Jeanine Áñez (2019-2020).
At the request of his government and the MAS, Áñez and other civic leaders were jailed for their roles in the 2019 crisis, which for the then-ruling party amounted to a “coup d’etat” against Morales, although these opponents regained their freedom this year following a review of their criminal cases.
In 2021, the Bolivian economy grew by 6.11%, compared to a decline of 8.74% in 2020, but then it contracted again and since 2023 it began to show signs of crisis, such as the decline in international reserves, the lack of dollars, fuel shortages and high inflation.
This diminished the popularity of Arce, whose government assured until the last moment that it had left a “stable” economy, while blaming Morales and the opposition for the economic difficulties, for the “blocking” of external financing by Parliament.
Arce’s management was marked by his battle with Morales over control of the MAS and the candidacy of the then-ruling party, which took part in that year’s general election, which was won by centrist Rodrigo Paz.
The MAS originally decided that Arce would seek re-election, but he rejected his candidacy in May, calling for left-wing unity for the elections, but this did not happen and the party almost lost its acronym.
His administration was also hit by corruption allegations and controversies surrounding three of his children, which Arce described at the time as a “slander.”
On November 6, two days before he left the presidency, the MAS leadership decided to expel him from the party.
Last month, Arce devoted himself to university teaching and returned to the public spotlight this week due to his arrest in the Fondioc case.
Before the interim judge, Arce attributed his arrest to “political” reasons and declared himself “absolutely innocent,” which he reiterated before his detention. EFE
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