Fernando Rivera pleads guilty in Ostreicher case

This just appeared in The Yeshiva World. As I told on this blog come time ago, the corruption was at the local level and not in La Paz. The government is going after those who treated Jacob Ostreicher badly, and this whole situation would have turned out better had not clowns like Sean Penn gotten involved, some accusing the La Paz administration for the local problems.

A Bolivian judge has sentenced to three years in prison the most senior government official known to be involved in the extortion ring that preyed on U.S. businessman Jacob Ostreicher. Fernando Rivera was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to abuse of authority and racketeering. The former Interior Ministry legal affairs chief has been in jail since November

He is the eighth former official, including three ex-prosecutors, to get a reduced sentence after pleading guilty to roles in the ring that fleeced Ostreicher while he was jailed for 18 months in a money-laundering probe. Ostreicher fled Bolivia in December 2013 after corrupt officials bled dry the $25 million rice-farming investment he was trying to salvage. Prosecutors never presented evidence that the New York man was laundering money - See more at:

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/284889/eight-bolivian-official-sentenced-for-extorting-jacob-ostreicher.html#sthash.C6Hg3IZa.dpuf

Fernando Rivera and GOP collaborators arrested in Bolivia

Jacob Ostreicher remains in jail in Bolivia, after having been used unwittingly as a pawn of the GOP in America - as I posted on 8 August at this site. Secret talks failed, as the GOP did not know how to deal with the situation, got scared after talk about this leading to Mitt Romney, and eventually lost interest in Jacob's case; they also knew by about mid-September that they were going to lose the elections, and Jacob was no longer needed. So he got left to the dishonest folks in Bolivia who did not mind making a bigger diplomatic mess of it than it was - and the formerly unnamed official, Fernando Rivera, to whom I alluded on this site, saw his only chance to make some dinero was to extort Jacob or take his assets. The Bolivian govnerment, headed by Evo Morales, sensed something was wrong, and arrested Rivera and five of his partners-in-crime. They are now in jail, but so is Ostreicher, and it is not clear what the next move is.
Ironically, there are still parties who want to use this against MAS and the Morales government, which is only trying to do the right thing, though they do not have all the facts.
But we are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully Ostreicher will be set free and the MAS government will have more useful information about the GOP and its antics.