Guatemala president under pressure over lobbying firm linked to Mike Pence

Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales is under growing political pressure over two contracts with an Indiana lobbying firm closely linked to the US vice-president Mike Pence.

Opposition politicians have called on Morales to reveal his role in the $80,000-a-month contracts signed with Barnes & Thornburg LLP, which appear to have been designed to sideline the state department and the Guatemalan foreign affairs ministry.

Barnes & Thornburg – which has extensive ties with the Republican party – was hired to improve relations between the governments of Guatemala and the US, but it remains unclear who funded the contract, which was signed by politicians without the authority to intervene in foreign affairs.

On Thursday, the US ambassador to Guatemala was drawn into the controversy after he was caught on tape describing the four lawmakers who signed the contracts as “idiots”.

Anti-corruption activists are calling for an urgent inquiry in Guatemala and the US.

“There should be an investigation by both authorities into the origins of the funds, who is really behind the contract and what is the lobbying was really for,” said Alejandro Barillas, a criminal lawyer at the international accountability group Impunity Watch.

The first contract was signed in April on behalf of Morales by a close friend and party fundraiser Claus Marvin Merida. At the time, Merida was posted in Washington as an honorary official representing Guatemalan migrants – a position which did not authorize him to sign government contracts, according to several lawyers consulted by the Guardian.

Merida is currently implicated two criminal investigations including one linked to illegal election campaign funds, the Guatemalan justice ministry has told the Guardian.

The contract was cancelled 11 days later, and Merida was relieved of his honorary duties after he was found to be lobbying Guatemalan senators to expel US ambassador Todd Robinson.

Morales has denied knowledge of the contract, but under the country’s constitution, only the president and ministry of exterior relations are authorized to intervene in foreign affairs.

“If the president’s good friend Claus Merida was acting independently, [Morales] is obliged by law to report this, as it’s a crime,” said congressman Amilcar Pop from the progressive indigenous party Winaq.

A second contract with Barnes and Thornburg was signed in May by four congressmen representing different political parties. The contract describes them as a coalition “united behind certain ideals and principles to advance the interests of the republic of Guatemala.”

The four congressmen have said that Barnes & Thornburg did not receive any funds from the Guatemalan government, but they have resisted pressure to reveal who financed the deal.

On Thursday, three of the four politicians demanded an apology from Ambassador Robinson after a recording emerged in which he described them as “idiots”.

“There are four idiots in congress. I have worked closely with many of the lawmakers, but there are some for whom I have no respect neither as lawmakers nor as authorities,” Robinson said, according to the audio published online by Prensa Libre.

In a separate radio interview, Robinson said that it was unnecessary to hire a lobbying firm to help bilateral relations. “If there are problems with relations between the two countries, there are two embassies to address them,” he said.

The second contract details a plan to develop close working relationships between members of the Guatemalan and US governments, and to set up a Guatemalan policy group chaired by managing partner of Barnes and Thornburg Robert Grand.

Grand served as senior member of the finance group for the Trump-Pence campaign and as finance vice-chair of the presidential inauguration committee. He sits on the Republican National Committee’s finance leadership team.

Several others B&T employees have worked for the vice-president including Stephen Simcox, who was Pence’s deputy general counsel when he was governor of Indiana, and partner Matt Morgan, who represented Pence’s gubernatorial campaign, and is now his deputy assistant and deputy counsel.

There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Barnes and Thornburg or the state department in Washington.

“The company should make transparent all negotiations linked to these contracts in order to avoid suspicion that it is associated with any crimes committed in Guatemala,” said Iduvina Hernandez, director of the Security in Democracy campaign group.

The growing scandal over the lobbying contracts has left Morales – a former comedian known best for his blackface routine – scrambling for political cover. “This could be the case that forces him out of the presidency,” said Hernandez.

News of the deal emerged amid a mounting backlash from Guatemalan elites against anti-corruption efforts in the country.

Hundreds of corrupt politicians, business owners and security forces have been forced out of office and prosecuted in recent years with the help of the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity (CICIG).

Morales came to power in 2015 after the then-president and vice president were charged with operating a criminal network which stole millions of dollars of public money.

Morales, who had no political experience, promised to clean up politics under the slogan: “Not corrupt, not a thief.”

Asked about corruption charges against both his brother and son during a recent television interview, Morales claimed some corruption was “normal”.