Bolivia’s highest court on Wednesday approved the extradition of the country’s former anti-narcotics official to the US on narcotics trafficking charges.
Maximiliano Dávila Pérez briefly served as Bolivia’s top counter-narcotics official in 2019, before President Evo Morales resigned. He later served as police commander in Bolivia under the government of current President Luis Arce.
In January 2022, Dávila was arrested in Bolivia, and a month later the US Department of Justice unsealed the indictment in a federal court in Manhattan, accusing him of conspiring to import cocaine from Bolivia and Peru into the US, and of use of weapons related to the alleged drug trafficking. .
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The US State Department offered a reward of up to $5 million for his arrest, accusing him of using his position to protect planes carrying cocaine. He was arrested that year by Bolivian officials.
In 2019, Dávila was the head of Bolivia’s anti-drug trafficking special forces, the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, under then-President Morales. After Morales resigned, a right-wing president took power and deposed Dávila.
Dávila faces additional charges in Bolivia for “illegal enrichment” and for having “certain links” to drug trafficking, Bolivia’s interior minister says said. He was arrested in 2022 while trying to flee to Argentina.
Earlier this year, Morales and Arce became bitter political enemies. Although Dávila has worked under both presidents, Arce supporters are using Wednesday’s ruling on Dávila’s extradition to accuse Morales of wrongdoing. Morales wants to run for president next year.
In 2008, Morales kicked the US ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, curtailing the US government’s drug war operations. In turn, the Bush administration also expelled the Bolivian ambassador from the country. However, the US and Bolivia still have an extradition treaty, which was signed in 1995.
It is unclear when Dávila will be extradited. His lawyers, cited by the Associated Press, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “serious violation of human rights.”
