Bolivian Senator Accuses U.S. Envoy of QR Bribery as Mariaca Is Seized

During Bolivia’s October 2 Assembly session on the case of Attorney General Roger Mariaca, Senator Ana María Crispín accused a U.S. Embassy representative of offering QR-code payments to lawmakers to influence the proceedings. The charge came as lawmakers faced a widening dispute over Mariaca’s arrest and who would control the Public Ministry.

Crispín confronted the U.S. representative during the Assembly session. Photo: FmBolivia.

Crispín asked the representative why he had shared a QR code with a legislator. He replied that it contained his WhatsApp contact information and said he was attending in connection with the Escudo de las Américas. Representatives from Argentina and Peru were also present, FmBolivia reported.

After the exchange, Crispín said she had seen a lawmaker receive a QR code and accused visitors linked to the initiative of paying legislators. FmBolivia reported that she did not name the legislator she said she saw.

Prosecutors call Mariaca’s arrest a kidnapping

Police detained Mariaca at Viru Viru International Airport on September 30. During a live broadcast, the Attorney General’s Office denounced the detention as a “secuestro”—a kidnapping—and accused police of illegally raiding its headquarters in Sucre. EFE reported that officers with their faces covered and CEIP intelligence-unit vests were visible inside the building.

Roger Mariaca, elected attorney general in 2024. Photo: Luis Gandarillas/EFE.

Vice President Edmand Lara condemned the way Mariaca was seized. He said arrests must follow Bolivia’s law and the Public Ministry’s direction, and that no DEA or other foreign agent may carry out arrests on Bolivian soil. Lara also questioned whether DEA agents took part in the operation and said the president cannot appoint Mariaca’s interim successor by decree.

Washington’s pressure and Bolivia’s lithium

The U.S. State Department revoked Mariaca’s visa two days before the arrest and accused him of taking bribes to facilitate drug trafficking. Mariaca called the U.S. action political interference. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then praised the arrests as “bold and decisive” measures, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.

That sequence—U.S. sanctions against Bolivia’s top prosecutor, an arrest denounced by prosecutors as a kidnapping, public U.S. endorsement of the operation, and then a bribery accusation against an embassy representative inside the legislature—has put foreign interference at the center of the crisis.

Bolivia’s lithium gives that dispute a longer history. In 2020, Elon Musk answered a social-media accusation that Washington had backed the 2019 ouster of Evo Morales so Tesla could gain access to Bolivian lithium with: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” The remark became a blunt expression of how casually a powerful U.S. business figure could talk about Bolivia’s sovereignty.

Crispín’s accusation now lands in a country where a sitting vice president has challenged the legality of a foreign-linked operation against the attorney general and prosecutors have publicly called it a kidnapping. The Assembly and the Foreign Ministry must answer who was meeting lawmakers, what the QR code was used for, and why a U.S. representative was present as legislators debated the future of the Public Ministry.

Sources

FmBolivia — Representative of the U.S. attends Assembly session on Mariaca case and raises questions.

EFE — Bolivia’s Attorney General’s Office denounces Roger Mariaca’s arrest.

Los Tiempos — Vice President Lara questions DEA role in Mariaca’s capture.

Reuters — Bolivia detains attorney general, government ministry says.

Associated Press — Bolivia arrests top prosecutor and 13 others accused by U.S. of protecting drug traffickers.

The Guardian — Musk’s 2020 “We will coup whoever we want” remark and the Bolivia lithium accusation.