BBC News, 8
October 2013
 |
| Leaf sellers need to be licensed with the coca industrialisation agency |
Related
Stories
The head of
Bolivia's coca control and industrialisation agency has been arrested over
accusations of illegally selling seized coca and other crimes.
Prosecutors
say Luis Cutipa diverted 45 tonnes of coca leaves and passed them on through
his relatives to drug lords.
Mr Cutipa
is also accused of falsifying documents to get his job and benefitting from an
increase in the price of coca sellers' licences.
He denies
any wrongdoing and says extra funds went to official bank accounts.
Prosecutors
say they will charge Luis Cutipa with neglect of duty, extortion, abuse of
power and contravening laws and the Constitution.
A separate
investigation is looking into the alleged fraud over documents he presented to
obtain his job.
Funding
cuts
Mr Cutipa
says he was forced to raise the price of licences after his agency lost funding
following President Evo Morales' decision to expel the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) from the country.
According
to Mr Cutipa, the funding cuts caused by the decision left him struggling to
cover expenses.
After
reaching an agreement with coca growers, the price of a licence was raised from
$87 (£54) to $170 (£110), he says.
Mr Cutipa
says that the extra income, amounitng to more than $500,000 (£310,000), was
kept in official bank accounts.
He also
dismissed the accusations that his two sisters helped to sell 45 tonnes of
seized coca as "slander".
This is not
the first time a high-ranking official in President Evo Morales' government has
been embroiled in scandal, says the BBCs Will Grant.
Two years
ago, the former chief of the country's anti-narcotics police, General Rene
Sanabria, was jailed for 14 years by a court in Miami for cocaine trafficking.
He was
working as an intelligence adviser to the government at the time of his arrest.
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