Guatemala City, May 9 (EFE).- Guatemala's vice president has resigned amid a customs corruption scandal that has implicated her close aides and rocked President Otto Perez Molina's administration.
With her decision to step down on Friday, less than four months before Guatemala's general elections, Roxana Baldetti voluntarily relinquished her immunity from prosecution.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Congress, in which the governing center-right Patriot Party does not have a majority, the go-ahead to form a commission to analyze whether to revoke that protection.
Hours before Perez Molina announced Baldetti's resignation, the Constitutional Court rejected her bid to overturn that ruling.
Ordinary Guatemalans and business leaders had demanded that Baldetti step down after prosecutors and the U.N.-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or Cicig, last month uncovered a corruption ring within the country's SAT tax agency, a scheme prosecutors say was led by Baldetti's former private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzon, who is now a fugitive.
Twenty-seven people have been arrested thus far in the case, in which officials allegedly lowered customs duties in exchange for bribes.
Baldetti has not been implicated in the scandal, but a source with Guatemala's Attorney General's Office told Efe that it is not ruling out "anything or anyone" in its investigation.
Word of the vice president's resignation quickly spread on social networks, and some 500 people gathered in Guatemala City's main square on Friday night to celebrate her departure from office.
After the announcement, the U.S. State Department said it supports Perez Molina and his administration's "efforts to address charges of official corruption in Guatemala."
Congress will select a replacement for Baldetti from a list of three candidates to be presented next week by the president.
