‘Customs scam’ president spends night in jail after new leader is sworn in

Otto Perez Molina has spent his first night in custody after he quit as president of Guatemala to answer allegations over a multi-million-dollar fraud. The 64-year-old left a court under heavy police guard and was later seen entering a military barracks in the capital. He will be held until the hearing into claims he was part of a ring which raked in a fotune by letting businesses off custom duties is reconvened on Friday morning.

I had things I could have done. I could have replaced the prosecutor, I could have dug in.

Otto Perez Molina.

The court hearing ended a dramatic week in the Central American nation where Perez Molina was stripped of immunity and then hauled before a judge. His vice-president Alejandro Maldonado, a 79-year-old conservative former high court justice who had served only a few months as the country’s No. 2 was sworn in on Thursday. He will be replaced in January when the winner of Sunday’s presidential election is inaugurated. "You can’t consider your work done,“ Mr Maldonado said in remarks aimed at all those demanding change. "In what is left of this year, there must be a positive response.”

I’m going to form a transition government and invite all the social groups that are protesting in the streets to propose young professionals to form the new administration.

President Alejandro Maldonado.

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