Bolivian Ministry of Defense wants to act as plaintiff in arms shipment case from Argentina

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the Bolivian Information Agency, Bolivian Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo announced Tuesday (31) that “in coordination with the Ministry of Justice, he will submit a memorandum to the Attorney General’s Office to enter the investigation process as a civil party and plaintiff in the investigation.”

The Bolivian Ministry of Defense will request to appear as a plaintiff in the judicial proceedings involving the alleged smuggling of repressive material from Argentina to the Plurinational State of Bolivia in November 2019, when the “coup d’état” that allegedly overthrew Evo Morales was occurring in that country.

“In coordination with the Ministry of Justice, we will submit a memorandum because we are a civil party as the Ministry of Defense. We also have to participate in this particular case due to the irregular importation of military material from Argentina,” Novillo said.

In this regard, Novillo said that the details of the presentation to be made by the Bolivian Ministry would be announced in the next few days.

“It is a matter of constituting ourselves as a civil party and, at the same time, as plaintiffs of the crimes committed in the internment of this material irregularly, violating the norm and committing crimes, by all those who acted on November 13 (2019), the day the plane arrived from Argentina,” he said.

Last July, Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta said that the military material sent to Bolivia by the Mauricio Macri government in 2019 represented “a concrete and real contribution to the process of rupture of the institutional order” of the Evo Morales government, which later led to the de facto regime of Jeanine Áñez.

The alleged smuggling came to light after the existence of a letter from the then commander general of the Bolivian Air Force (FAB), Jorge Gonzalo Terceros, was confirmed in which he thanked the Argentine Embassy for its “cooperation” in the context of international assistance “due to the conflictual situation that Bolivia is experiencing.”

The new Argentine government has denounced Macri and several of his cabinet members for  involvement in the supposed 2019 coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia.

“The official documents found in recent weeks show facts that confirm what has been denounced in due course: It was Mauricio Macri, the nation’s former president, who ordered and directly organized the smuggling operation,” states the document submitted to the Argentine judiciary by the Minister of National Security, Sabina Frederic, the head of AFIP, Mercedes Marcó del Pont, and the Minister of Justice, Martín Soria.