Former Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodriguez is facing corruption charges, three years after he stepped down as head of the Organization of American States (OAS) amid accusations of accepting a bribe from French telecom Alcatel.
According to local daily La Nacion, prosecutors are accusing Rodriguez of accepting around 230,000 U.S. dollars from Alcatel's Latin American branch in 2001 in return for granting the company a 149 million U.S. dollars cell-phone contract.
Former director of Costa Rica's Electricity Institute Jose Antonio Lobo testified that another 590,000 U.S. dollars was also pocketed by the ex-president.
Rodriguez, president of Costa Rica from 1998 to 2002, was head of the OAS for less than a month because of the bribery case.
A former senior executive of Alcatel's Latin American branch acknowledged bribing top Costa Rican officials to the tune of 2.5 million U.S. dollars from 2000 to 2004.
Source: Xinhua
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