The Constitutional Court (CC) suspended the sentence issued by accepting charges against the former Minister of Communications José Luis Benito, who accepted his guilt in the Chimaltenango Libramiento case.
In accordance with the resolution of the CC, the appeals filed by the Attorney General’s Office and the Public Ministry were declared admissible.
The CC recalled that José Luis Benito requested, during the course of the process, to submit to the special procedure for accepting charges. In that sense, in December 2025 the oral hearing was held in which the former minister was declared responsible for the crime of fraud. For this reason, a sentence of five years in prison was imposed and, when the benefit of sentence reduction was applied, it was reduced to two years and six months in prison, commutable at a rate of Q20 per day.
In addition, special disqualification from holding public office for the duration of the sentence was imposed as an accessory penalty.
The Chimaltenango Bypass was built during the government of former President Jimmy Morales, who considered it a “mega project.”
Since its opening, the section has recorded a series of landslides that have put the lives of motorists at risk. The work had a cost of Q550 million.
After the sentence issued in December, Benito stated that the process has been exhausting for him and his family.
According to what the former official said on that occasion, the Public Ministry accuses him of fraud for not verifying the experience of the contractor who was awarded a 2.4-kilometer subsection of the 14 that make up the Bypass.
Benito assured on that occasion that the indictment does not detail the alleged amounts defrauded from the State and affirmed that there was no theft of public funds, bribes or overvaluation.
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With information from Ángel Oliva