Álvaro Colom, former president of Guatemala, dies at 71

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Former Guatemala President Álvaro Colom, who governed from 2008 to 2012 and supported a United Nations anticorruption mission that later investigated him, died Monday, lawmakers from his party announced. He was 71.

“I deeply lament the death of ex-President Colom, a man of profound democratic convictions and great social sensibility,” said Guatemalan lawmaker Orlando Blanco, leader of the center-left National Unity of Hope Party in Congress.

Colom won office in a runoff election in 2007, defeating retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina. He entered office promising to reduce poverty after having worked with civil war refugees in isolated highlands. He was an ordained Mayan minister and said he would seek guidance from the Mayan Elders National Council, a group of spiritual leaders.

Colom also supported the U.N.’s International Commission Against Impunity In Guatemala, better known by its Spanish initial CICIG. It had started work the year before he took office.

But in 2018, Colom was arrested, along with nearly his entire former Cabinet, in relation to a corruption investigation involving a bus concession.

The case centered on a public bus company known as Transurbano. The government auctioned off 25-year concessions for Guatemala City bus routes, and the private companies that won the contracts were later exempted from taxes. The CICIG worked on the case with Guatemalan prosecutors.

Colom denied any wrongdoing and the case had not gone to trial.

Pérez Molina, who won office after Colom, was eventually forced from the presidency by another CICIG investigation and sentenced to prison for corruption in December.