This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Guatemala’s President Otto Pérez Molina has resigned days before an election, after the attorney general obtained a warrant for his arrest amid a corruption scandal.

Pérez Molina submitted his resignation at midnight local time, his spokesman Jorge Ortega said. The resignation is not effective until Congress accepts it and names a new president. A meeting was scheduled for Thursday morning to do this.

In a fast-moving climax to a crisis that has been building for months, MPs withdrew the president’s immunity from prosecution on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the attorney general, Thelma Aldana, requested an arrest warrant for Pérez Molina.

Aldana later said a judge had issued the warrant on suspicion of illicit association, fraud and receiving bribe money, relating to a widespread customs fraud ring over which the former vice-president has already been detained and faces charges.

Protesters, business leaders and Catholic church officials had called for Pérez Molina to resign in recent weeks as the investigation of the customs fraud ring grew wider and hit more officials. Pérez Molina was steadfast in his plan to stay, until the judge’s order. He has maintained his innocence.

Ortega said Pérez Molina had submitted his resignation “to maintain the institution of the presidency and resolve on his own the legal proceedings levelled against him”.

The vice-president, Alejandro Maldonado, is constitutionally in line to assume the presidency. Maldonado, a conservative lawyer and former constitutional court judge, was chosen to replace the former vice-president Roxana Baldetti, who resigned on 8 May due to the same scandal and is now in custody. She too maintains her innocence.

Maldonado would probably remain in office until the winner of Sunday’s election is inaugurated on 14 January next year.

No formal charges have been filed against Pérez Molina. Aldana said a preliminary investigation was under way into his possible involvement in the fraud ring.

The president’s lawyer, Cesar Calderon, said Pérez Molina would come forward voluntarily as soon as they confirmed that the warrant had been issued. Pérez Molina was already under orders not to leave the country.

The corruption scandal, uncovered by prosecutors and a UN commission investigating criminal networks in Guatemala, involves a scheme known as “la linea”, or the line, in which businesspeople paid bribes to avoid import duties through the customs agency. The ring is believed to have defrauded the state of millions of dollars.

Baldetti’s former personal secretary was named as the alleged ringleader.

Protesters have filled the streets almost daily over the scandal, demanding not only that Pérez Molina step down but that Sunday’s election be postponed. Pérez Molina said delaying the vote would be against the law.