Arturo Murillo

Despite the admissions of his co-conspirators, Murillo opted to plead not guilty, causing his case to be moved to trial. In January 2022, the court accepted Murillo's defense's request for more time to prepare for the trial. In October 2022, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder bribes in the case. On January 5, 2023, Murillo was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison.

On 13 January 2022, Lanchipa announced that the Prosecutor's Office had formally filed accusations against both Murillo and López on charges of improper use of influence, negotiations incompatible with the exercise of public functions and non-compliant with duties, contracts harmful to the State, uneconomical conduct, and illicit enrichment of individuals affecting the State. In addition to the two ministers, those accused are: the former director of administrative affairs of the Ministry of Government, Sergio Alberto Zamora; former director of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Defense, Raúl López; former head of the Legal Analysis Unit of the Ministry of Defense, Alan Menacho; former director of logistics, Pedro Rea; former director-general of administrative affairs, Ruth Palomeque; former head of class 5 articles of the Ministry of Defense, Dennis Vera; and CEO of Bravo Tactical Solutions LLC, Bryan Berkman. At a press conference, Lanchipa affirmed that the State would seek a maximum sentence for the accused, entailing ten years plus aggravating circumstances.

Murillo appealed the decision in October 2018, seeking the conviction's annulment under the justification that the falsehood of the documents had not been adequately demonstrated at the trial. Justice took two years and five months to resolve the appeal. Finally, on 4 June 2021, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice confirmed the original sentence of two years. Had the ruling been released in 2019, it would have barred him from assuming office as minister of government.

Following Morales' resignation, opposition legislator Jeanine Áñez, a fellow member of the UD alliance, legitimized her succession to the presidency, assuming office as the head of a transitional administration on 12 November. The following day, she appointed her ministerial cabinet, designating Murillo as minister of government. In an interview with Radio Fides on 31 May 2021, former minister of communication Roxana Lizárraga revealed that Murillo's appointment "did not have the backing of many of the [other] ministers […] because he believed that, as a minister of government, he had all the power in the world". However, she claimed that his entry into Áñez's cabinet had been sponsored by UN leader Samuel Doria Medina, who she affirmed had suggested Murillo for the position. Doria Medina denied the allegations the following day, stating that he wouldn't have had any motive to do so given Murillo's departure from UN in 2018.

The whereabouts of Murillo and López remained unclear for some days, leading the Prosecutor's Office to request a report from the General Directorate of Migration on whether either of the former ministers had fled the country. On 16 November, it issued an arrest warrant against both of them on the grounds that "there are indications that the accused may hide, flee, or leave the country". The following day, Police Commander Johnny Aguilera reported that Murillo and López had departed on a FAB-046 plane from El Trompillo Airport on 5 November, arriving in Santa Cruz, from where they crossed the border through Puerto Suárez and into Brazil. After that, they would've traveled on foot through areas without immigration control until they arrived at Corumbá. According to Colonel Pablo García, director of Interpol-Bolivia, López "used his last two days as an authority [to gain a] last favor" from members of the military, who secured the plane for their escape. As a result of these events, the former head of the General Directorate of Migration, Marcel Rivas, was apprehended on 19 November, with the Prosecutor's Office accusing him of having helped facilitate the flight of the ex-ministers. Three more officials —subordinates of the general directorate in offices in Puerto Quijarro and Puerto Suárez— were subsequently arrested on 21 November. While López remained in Brazil, Murillo left the country on a commercial flight from São Paulo and arrived in Panama at 5:45 a.m. on 9 November. He would've remained there for at least seven days in order to carry out a mandated quarantine period. On 5 January 2021, Prosecutor General Juan Lanchipa reported that Murillo had been in the United States since 12 November. The following day, the Prosecutor's Office announced its intent to indict Murillo and López on charges of breach of duties and improper use of influence, among other crimes relating to the tear gas case, in order to facilitate the activation of a Red Notice from Interpol. The indictment was formalized two days later.

Soon after Murillo's arrest, former president Áñez, herself incarcerated in the Miraflores jail since March 2021, denounced her former minister, stating on her Twitter that "corruption is an issue that I never accepted in my government; unfortunately, there were officials who distanced themselves from all ethics. Nobody chooses collaborators to be corrupted, and these acts have to be punished with the full weight of the law because they make the country look bad". Shortly after, former minister of the presidency Jerjes Justiniano accused Áñez of having known of the corruption from at least December and at most February and alleged that it would have been very difficult for the former president to have been unaware of such actions.

After the 2020 general election, Murillo, along with Minister of Defense Luis Fernando López, fled the country just three days before the inauguration of President-elect Luis Arce. From Brazil, he traveled to Panama before finally finding himself in the United States. In May 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested him and four associates in Florida on criminal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He remains incarcerated in the Federal Detention Center in Miami following a seventy month sentence

In December, Murillo made the first visit of a transition official to the United States where, on the sixteenth, he announced that an arrest warrant would be issued against Evo Morales in the "next few hours" on charges of terrorism. At a press conference held on 8 January 2020, Murillo infamously held up a pair of handcuffs before the media, stating, "here we are waiting for Mr. Evo Morales to come to Bolivia; here are the handcuffs to take him to Chonchocoro [prison, …] not because of politics, not because of persecution, [but] because [he is a] terrorist". The following day, Murillo requested the activation of an Interpol Red Notice in order to seek Morales' arrest abroad. Days later, the minister made further comments calling Morales a "confessed terrorist" and saying that he had a "cell with his name in Chonchocoro".

Following the violent events of Senkata and Sacaba, several legislators from the MAS announced their intent to file a request for interpellation in the Legislative Assembly for Murillo and Minister of Defense Luis Fernando López, in order to receive an oral report on the incidents which led to several deaths. In late December, President of the Senate Eva Copa stated that the interpellation would be held after the recess of the assembly, with President of the Chamber of Deputies Sergio Choque announcing on 3 January 2020 that the meetings had been scheduled for the eleventh and twelfth of that month. In response, on 10 January, both Murillo and López presented justifications for why they could not attend the session, which were accepted by the legislature, who rescheduled it for the seventeenth. However, neither of the two presented themselves on that date, issuing further justifications for their absence. In view of this, the Chamber of Deputies approved on 19 February a formal request demanding that President Áñez "instruct the ministers of State to comply with their constitutional duties".

Murillo was implicated in another scandal when on 31 May 2020, the journalist Junior Arias brought to light accusations of irregular purchases of tear gas and other non-lethal equipment at highly inflated prices during the social conflicts of late 2019. According to the documents he presented, on 25 November 2019, the Ministry of Government requested the purchase of chemical agents from the Brazilian company Condor Tecnologias Não-Letais. The following day, it brought on the Miami-based company Bravo Tactical Solutions LLC as an intermediary. The minister of defense signed the contract on 19 December for an amount of US$5.6 million authorized by the Ministry of Economy. At that price, each tear gas cartridge would've cost between Bs250 and Bs270 (US$36.25 to US$39.15), more than double what other countries such as Venezuela had previously paid. On the day the case was brought to light, the Ministry of Government released an official statement calling it a "false story […] built on the basis of irresponsible insinuations".

Appointed at the tail end of the 2019 political crisis, Murillo quickly became characterized as one of the "strong men" of the Jeanine Áñez administration. Minutes after his inauguration, he announced the "hunt" for ex-officials of the government of Evo Morales under various criminal charges and warned of severe consequences for acts of sedition. In May 2020, Murillo was alleged as the ringleader in the tear gas case, in which the Ministries of Government and Defense were accused of irregularly purchasing non-lethal weapons at inflated prices. His refusal to cooperate with various criminal and legislative investigations was denounced by Attorney General José María Cabrera, who the president dismissed at Murillo's behest. The removal of the attorney general brought into question the scope of Murillo's influence over the president and led to the resignation of multiple ministers amid accusations that he was the "power behind the throne" of the Áñez administration. Murillo was called to hearings by the Plurinational Legislative Assembly but failed to present himself, ultimately resulting in his censure by the legislature. As per the terms of the Constitution, he was dismissed as minister but was reappointed just a day later, exploiting a loophole in the document's text that President Áñez had previously utilized in another minister's censure months prior.

Amid the wave of violence and social turmoil of the 2019 political crisis, on 11 November, Murillo denounced that his Victoria Hotel had been burned down the night prior. He alleged that his "work of more than twenty years" had been reduced to ashes by a mob of cocaleros and militants of the MAS "just because it belonged to [him]"; hours prior, President Morales had been forced to resign due to nationwide protests. Murillo's family —three elderly people, including his sister; and two young girls, one one-year-old and the other six— spent eight days in hiding on the bank of a river in the Villa Tunari tropics before being rescued by a land and air police-military operation.

On 26 May, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released a statement announcing that the FBI had arrested Murillo and four other individuals in the states of Florida and Georgia between 21 and 22 May. Aside from Murillo, those arrested were Sergio Méndez, former chief of staff of the Ministry of Government; Bryan Berkman, CEO of Bravo Tactical Solutions LLC; his father, Luis Berkman; and Philip Lichtenfeld. The two Bolivians and three Americans were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering under allegations that Murillo participated in a bribery scheme related to the tear gas case between approximately November 2019 and April 2020. According to the DOJ, the three Florida-based American businessmen paid a total of $602,000 in bribes to Murillo, Méndez, and one other government official in exchange for the $5.6 million contract with the Ministry of Defense for the procurement of tear gas and other non-lethal military equipment. If convicted, they all face a maximum penalty of twenty years.

Murillo announced that he had decided to leave the National Unity Front and retire from politics on 30 November 2018. The decision came as a result of the collapse of the Democratic Unity coalition between National Unity and the Social Democratic Movement (MDS), which numerous members of both parties criticized. In his statement, he endorsed MDS Senator Óscar Ortiz Antelo in his presidential bid and announced that he would not seek reelection, instead hoping to retire to his hotel business in Cochabamba.

In 2011, Murillo was met with allegations by the Ministry of Defense that he had forged his military service records in order to qualify before to National Electoral Court as a candidate in 2009. According to the ministry, the files in question were false because the numerical code they belonged to corresponded to another person. For this, the Ministries of Defense and Institutional Transparency filed criminal proceedings with the Prosecutor's Office against him for the crimes of filing a forged instrument and ideological falsehood. On 3 May 2016, the Fifth Sentencing Court of the Judicial District of La Paz, by unanimous vote, acquitted Murillo on the second charge but found him guilty on the first, sentencing him to two years in the San Pedro prison. In response, UN denounced the ruling as an "abuse of political power against democratic dissent", alleging that the judicial branch had become subject to the MAS, who sought to silence Murillo as the head of the Democratic Unity caucus in the Senate.

In 2009, Murillo was absent from his party's parliamentary lists. Instead of seeking reelection, he directed his attention towards the 2010 Cochabamba mayoral election, facilitating his mayoral candidacy through the All for Cochabamba alliance, a coalition between UN and Popular Consensus. In addition, on 4 January 2010, he secured the support of the Social Democratic Power candidate Ninoska Lazarte, who agreed to withdraw her name from contention in exchange for the position of first municipal councilor. Through his candidacy, Murillo managed to form a broad bloc of opponents of Morales' Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP).

After the 2010 elections, Murillo remained close with Doria Medina's party, eventually becoming UN's spokesman at the national level. He returned to the political scene in 2014 when UN, hedging its bets on ex-legislators to confront MAS, presented him as their candidate for first senator for Cochabamba as a member of the Democratic Unity (UD) coalition. In the 2014 general elections, Murillo was elected senator for Cochabamba, winning the position as the only opposition senator in the department.

At the invitation of businessman Samuel Doria Medina, Murillo entered the political field in 2005 as a member of the National Unity Front (UN). In the 2005 general elections, he was elected as a deputy for Cochabamba Department on a party list of UN. During his term, Murillo was noted as a staunch critic of the now-president, Evo Morales. Due to his condemnations, he claimed political persecution when in 2009, the Cochabamba Department of Tourism closed his Victoria Hotel, along with sixteen other hotels, having found that they had violated regulations by not having an operating license or keeping daily guest entry and exit reports.

Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic (born 27 December 1963) is a Bolivian businessman, hotelier, and politician who served as minister of government from 2019 to 2020. As a member of the National Unity Front, he previously served as senator for Cochabamba from 2015 to 2019 and as a plurinominal member of the Chamber of Deputies from Cochabamba from 2006 to 2010.

Arturo Murillo was born on 27 December 1963 in Cochabamba. From the age of fourteen, he worked at the Victoria Hotel in Villa Tunari, eventually becoming the owner. Murillo did not pursue university studies, graduating with a bachelor's degree from the Center for Accelerated Secondary Education (CEMA) before venturing into the business sector of the hotel industry. Through that, he came to found the Association of Hoteliers of the Tropic of Cochabamba and was a member of the Federation of Private Business Entities of Cochabamba (FEPC). Both posts put Murillo into conflict with the cocalero activist Evo Morales whose political tactics, including roadblocks, seriously interrupted tourism in the Chapare Province.