Last week, Perez resigned and was jailed for three months amid a major corruption conspiracy involving Guatemala's now resigned vice president Roxana Baldetti, which enabled officials to lower customs taxes in exchange for bribes.
"The CICIG [International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala] has been an instrument that has served others, but not to strengthen justice. We see it really as an interference of the United States, who were the ones who most pressured for it. They orchestrated things so that it would lead to [my arrest]," Perez said to CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
Acting as an independent international body, CICIG investigates illegal security groups and clandestine security organizations in Guatemala, according to the UN website. The illegal groups are believed to have infiltrated state institutions, fostering criminal impunity and undermining democratic gains in Guatemala following the end of the country's internal military conflict in the 1990s.
