Latin-America
Nicaraguan bishop who refused exile gets 26 years in prison
Roman Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, an outspoken critic of Nicaragua’s government, was sentenced to 26 years in prison and stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship Friday, the latest move by President Daniel Ortega against the Catholic church and his opponents.
A day after he refused to get on a flight to the United States with 222 other prisoners, all opponents of Ortega, a judge sentenced Álvarez for undermining the government, spreading false information, obstruction of functions and disobedience, according to a government statement published in official outlets.
The sentence handed down by Octavio Ernesto Rothschuh, chief magistrate of the Managua appeals court, is the longest given to any of Ortega's opponents over the last couple years.
Álvarez was arrested in August along with several other priests and lay people. When Ortega ordered the mass release of political leaders, priests, students and activists widely considered political prisoners and had some of them put on a flight to Washington Thursday, Alvarez refused to board without being able to consult with other bishops, Ortega said.
Nicaragua's president called Álvarez's refusal “an absurd thing." Álvarez, who had been held under house arrest, was then taken to the nearby Modelo prison.
Álvarez had been one of the most outspoken religious figures still in Nicaragua as Ortega intensified his repression of the opposition.
Nicaragua’s Episcopal Conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sentence. Reached by the AP, Managua vicar Mons. Carlos Avilés said he hadn't heard anything official. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The church is essentially the last independent institution trusted by a large portion of Nicaraguans and that makes it a threat to Ortega's increasingly authoritarian rule.
Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Álvarez's sentence “constitutes the most severe repression against the Catholic Church in Latin America since the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998.”
“Since first becoming the ruling party in 1979 the Sandinistas have repressed the Catholic Church like few other regimes in Latin America,” Chesnut said. “Pope Francis has refrained from criticizing President Ortega for fear of inflaming the situation, but many believe that now is the time for him to speak out prophetically in defense of the most persecuted Church in Latin America.”
Monsignor Silvio Báez, the former outspoken Managua auxiliary bishop who was recalled to the Vatican in 2019, said on Twitter “the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s hatred toward Mons. Rolando Álvarez is irrational and out of control.”
Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Managua, has been a key religious voice in discussions of Nicaragua’s future since 2018, when a wave of protests against Ortega’s government led to a sweeping crackdown on opponents.
When the protests first erupted, Ortega asked the church to serve as mediator in peace talks.
On April 20, 2018, hundreds of student protesters sought refuge at Managua’s cathedral. When police and Sandinista Youth descended, the students retreated inside, leaving only after clergy negotiated their safe passage.
“We hope there would be a series of electoral reforms, structural changes to the electoral authority — free, just and transparent elections, international observation without conditions,” Álvarez said a month after the protests broke out. “Effectively the democratization of the country.”
By that summer, the Church was under attack by Ortega's supporters.
A pro-government mob shoved, punched and scratched at Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and other Catholic leaders as they tried to enter the Basilica San Sebastian in Diriamba on July 9, 2018.
For nearly 15 hours overnight on July 13-14, 2018, armed government backers fired on a church in Managua while 155 student protesters who had been dislodged from a nearby university lay under the pews. A student who was shot in the head at a barricade outside died on the rectory floor.
More recently, Ortega has accused the Church of being in on an alleged foreign-backed plot to depose him.
Last summer, the government seized several radio stations owned by the diocese. At the time, it appeared Ortega’s administration wanted to silence critical voices ahead of municipal elections.
The Holy See has been largely silent on the situation in Nicaragua, believing that any public denunciation will only inflame tensions further between the government and the local church.
The Vatican’s last comment came in August when Pope Francis expressed concern about the raid of Álvarez's residence and called for dialogue.
Earlier this week, judges sentenced five other Catholic priests to prison. They were all aboard Thursday's flight.
Before the sentence was announced Friday, Emily Mendrala, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said “we see yesterday’s event as a positive step that could put the (bilateral) relationship on a more constructive trajectory.” But she added that “we still have concerns with the human rights situation and the situation with democracy in Nicaragua.”
The State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone Friday with Nicaragua Foreign Minister Denis Moncada about the prisoners’ release and “the importance of constructive dialogue between the United States to build a better future for the Nicaraguan people.” Presumably the conversation occurred before Álvarez’s sentence was announced.
Vilma Núñez, director of the Nicaragua Center for Human Rights, which had been supporting prisoners in their cases, called the sentence “arbitrary and last minute,” noting that it included crimes that were not part of his original conviction.
“The personal well-being and life of the Monsignor is in danger,” Núñez said.
After expelling nearly all of his most vocal critics, Ortega found himself stuck with the bishop in a still heavily Catholic country.
“The Catholic Church, I think, is one of the main institutions that the Ortega regime really, really fears,” Antonio Garrastazu, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute in Washington, said before the the sentencing. “The Catholic Church are really the ones that can actually change the hearts and minds of the people.”
Prior to the release of prisoners, sanctions and public criticism of Ortega had been building for months, but both United States and Nicaraguan officials say the decision to put 222 dissidents on a plane to Washington came suddenly.
The majority had been sentenced in the past couple years to lengthy prison terms. The release came together in a couple of days and the prisoners had no idea what was happening until their buses turned into Managua’s international airport.
“I think the pressure, the political pressure of the prisoners, the political prisoners became important to the Ortega regime, even for the people, the Sandinista people who were tired of abuses,” opposition leader Juan Sebastian Chamorro, who was among those released, said during a press conference Friday. “I think (Ortega) wanted to basically send the opposition outside of the country into exile.”
In Ortega’s mind, they are terrorists. Funded by foreign governments, they worked to destabilize his government after huge street protests broke out in April 2018, he maintains.
Ortega said Vice President Rosario Murillo, his wife, first came to him with the idea of expelling the prisoners.
“Rosario says to me, ‘Why don’t we tell the ambassador to take all of these terrorists,’” Ortega recounted in a rambling speech Thursday night. In a matter of days, it was done.
Steady rains set off mudslides that kill at least 36 in Peru
Landslides triggered by steady rains swept mud, water and rocks into several villages in southern Peru, killing at least 36 people, authorities said Monday.
Wilson Gutierrez, a civil defense official in the Mariano Nicolás Valcárcel municipality in Camana province, told local radio RPP that 36 bodies had been recovered in a remote sector called Miski.
Among the dead were five people who were riding in a van that was pushed into a river by a surge of mud.
Local officials appealed for heavy machinery to be sent in to clear debris blocking three kilometers (nearly two miles) of an important road.
Civil defense officials said an estimated 630 homes were unusable after the landslides, which also hit bridges, irrigation canals and roads.
Constant rains are frequent in February in Peru and often cause deadly landslides.
Chile wildfires spread amid heat wave as death toll rises
Chile extended an emergency declaration to yet another region on Saturday as firefighters struggled to control dozens of raging wildfires that have claimed at least 22 lives amid a scorching heat wave that has broken records.
The government declared a state of catastrophe in the La Araucanía region, which is south of Ñuble and Biobío, two central-southern regions where the emergency declaration had already been issued. The measure allows for greater cooperation with the military.
At least 22 people have died in connection to the fires and 554 have been injured, including 16 in serious condition, according to Interior Minister Carolina Tohá. The death toll is likely to rise as Tohá said there are unconfirmed reports of at least 10 people missing.
Sixteen of the deaths took place in Biobío, five in La Araucanía and one in Ñuble.
The deaths included a Bolivian pilot who died when a helicopter that was helping combat the flames crashed in La Araucanía. A Chilean mechanic also died in the crash.
Over the past week, fires have burned through an area equivalent to what is usually burned in an entire year, Tohá said in a news conference.
The fires come at a time of record high temperatures.
“The thermometer has reached points that we have never known until now,” Tohá said.
As of Saturday morning, there were 251 wildfires raging throughout Chile, 151 of which were under control, according to Chile’s Senapred disaster agency.
“Seventy-six new fires appeared yesterday,” Tohá said Saturday.
The minister also suggested the fires should serve as yet another wake up call about the effects of climate change.
“The evolution of climate change shows us again and again that this has a centrality and a capacity to cause an impact that we have to internalize much more,” Tohá said. “Chile is one of the countries with the highest vulnerability to climate change, and this isn’t theory but rather practical experience.”
Chile is requesting international cooperation to assist the firefighting efforts.
“We’re requesting support from several countries to address the emergency,” President Gabriel Boric wrote on social media.
Mexican actor Pablo Lyle gets prison for road rage death
Mexican actor Pablo Lyle was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter after fatally punching a man during a road rage confrontation in Miami in 2019.
The sentence came almost four years after Lyle was charged with murder in the death of a man he struck during a traffic incident.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez announced the sentence two months after rejecting the actor's request for a new trial and upholding the guilty verdict reached by a jury in October.
The 36-year-old Mexican telenovela star, who appeared in the Netflix crime series “Yankee,” had faced a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The judge also ordered eight years of probation, conflict resolution management and 500 hours of community service for the actor.
The actor has 30 days to appeal the sentence.
Dressed in a red jail uniform, Lyle looked calm and expressed repentance during the more than three-hour hearing. He has been detained since his Oct. 4 conviction.
“I am very sorry,” Lyle said in Spanish, looking at some of the members of Hernández family who were in the court room, among them his son. “I always pray for him and for you, with all my heart.”
After a week-long trial, a six-member jury convicted Lyle of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Juan Ricardo Hernández, 63.
Hernández, who was unarmed, suffered a traumatic brain injury and died four days later while hospitalized.
Lyle's lawyers argued that he acted in self-defense. They also said that there were inconsistencies in the evidence during the trial.
Read more: Cinematographer Zahid Hossain killed in road accident
When handing down her sentence, the judge, however, said that Lyle made a “poor decision” and acted “out of anger.”
“The evidence shows that the action of Mr. Lyle was an act of violence,” Tinkler said. “Mr. Lyle has to be held responsible for those actions.”
The road confrontation was captured by security cameras.
Lyle’s brother-in-law was taking the actor, his wife and two children to the airport. Their car passed that of Hernández, who stopped at a red light, got out and approached the driver's window of Lyle’s vehicle to claim that they had blocked his way.
According to security video footage, Lyle and Hernández got into an argument, and the actor punched Hernández in the face. Lyle claimed he was defending himself. He said that his children were terrified and that he feared Hernández had a weapon.
At the hearing, Lyle's wife, his brother-in-law and his sister offered testimony before the judge made her decision public.
On Hernández’s side, his son described him as a very happy, attentive person, with good health and principles. Juan Ricardo Hernández Jr. asked the judge to sentence Lyle to the maximum of 15 years.
He said that the day before the altercation, he had been with his father.
“I didn’t want to believe it was him,” Hernández’s son said of going to the hospital to see his father after receiving news of the incident.
13 dead in Chile amid struggle to contain raging wildfires
At least 13 people were reported dead as of Friday night as a result of the more than 150 wildfires burning across Chile that have destroyed homes and thousands of acres of forest while the South American country is in the midst of a scorching heat wave.
Four of the deaths involved two separate vehicles in the Biobío region, around 560 kilometers (348 miles) south of the capital of Santiago.
“In one case they were burned because they were hit by the fire,” Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said. In the other case, she said, the victims died in a crash, “probably trying to escape the fire.”
The fifth victim was a firefighter who was run over by a fire truck while combatting a blaze in the area.
Later in the afternoon, a helicopter that was helping combat the flames crashed in the Araucanía region, killing the pilot, a Bolivian national, and a mechanic, who was Chilean.
At nightfall, the national agency responsible for emergencies raised the death toll to 13 without giving details on the latest deaths.
As of midday Friday, 151 wildfires were burning throughout Chile, including 65 declared under control. The fires had blazed through more than 14,000 hectares (34,595 acres).
Most of the wildfires are in Biobío and neighboring Ñuble, where the government has declared states of catastrophe that allows greater coordination with the military and the suspension of certain constitutional rights.
The heat wave hitting Chile is set to continue with high temperatures and strong winds that could make the wildfires more challenging.
President Gabriel Boric suspended his vacation to travel to the affected areas on Friday and said there is “evidence” that some of the wildfires were sparked by unauthorized burnings.
“The full force of the state will be deployed to, first of all, fight the fires and to accompany all the victims,” Boric said.
It remained unclear how many homes and other structures had been burned.
“Families are having a very difficult time,” Ivonne Rivas, the mayor of Tomé in Biobío, told local radio. “It’s hell what they are living through, the fire got away from us.”
The wildfires caused the suspension of a highly anticipated announcement by forensic experts who were expected to give the cause of death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of a Nobel Prize for literature.
The experts were set to give their view on whether Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer or whether he was poisoned, potentially settling one of the great mysteries of post-coup Chile.
The doctor in charge of delivering the report’s findings was unable to connect to the internet because he is in a region affected by the wildfires, a spokesman for the country’s judiciary said.
Brazil's Bolsonaro applies for 6-month visitor visa to stay in US
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has filed a request for a six-month visitor visa to stay in the U.S., indicating he may have no immediate intention of returning home, where legal issues await.
The application was first reported by The Financial Times, citing Bolsonaro's immigration lawyer, Felipe Alexandre. Contacted by The Associated Press, the lawyer's firm, AG Immigration, confirmed the report.
Bolsonaro left Brazil for Florida on Dec. 30, two days before the inauguration of his leftist rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The ceremony proceeded without incident, but a week later thousands of Bolsonaro's die-hard supporters stormed the capital and trashed the top government buildings demanding that Lula's election be overturned.
Bolsonaro is being investigated for whether he had any role in inciting that uprising. It is just one of several probes targeting the former president and that pose a legal headache upon his eventual homecoming, and which could strip him of his eligibility in future races — or worse.
Read more: Brazil authorities seek to punish pro-Bolsonaro rioters
For the first time in his more than three-decade political career as a lawmaker then as president, he no longer enjoys the special legal protection that requires any trial be held at the Supreme Court.
It has been widely assumed — though not confirmed — that Bolsonaro entered the U.S. on an A-1 visa reserved for sitting heads of state. If so, he would have 30 days from the end of his presidential term to either leave the U.S. or adjust his status with the Department of Homeland Security.
Meantime, the shape of his political future and his potential return to Brazil has been a matter of rumor and speculation.
Bolsonaro's calculus appears to be to distance himself from the radicals whose destruction in the capital could implicate him in the short term, with the aim of some day returning to lead the opposition, said Mario Sérgio Lima, a political analyst at Medley Advisors.
“He is giving it some time, staying away a bit from the country at a moment when he can begin to suffer legal consequences for his supporters’ attitudes,” said Lima. “I don’t think the fact of him staying away is enough. The processes will continue, but maybe he thinks he can at least avoid some sort of revenge punishment.”
Bolsonaro has been staying in a home outside Orlando, Florida, and video has shown him snapping photos with supporters in the gated community and ambling around inside a supermarket.
In the wake of the rampage in the Brazilian capital this month, a group of 46 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden demanding Bolsonaro’s visa be revoked.
“The United States must not provide shelter for him, or any authoritarian who has inspired such violence against democratic institutions,” they wrote.
Bolsonaro's son, a senator, told reporters at an event this weekend that he was not sure when his father would return to Brazil.
"It could be tomorrow, it could be in six months, he might never return. I don't know. He's relaxing,” Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro said.
Read more: 5 questions on Bolsonaro supporters storming Brazil's Congress
Asked whether Bolsonaro has filed any request for documentation or help with visa processses, Brazil’s foreign ministry referred AP to U.S. authorities. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services referred AP to the State Department, which has repeatedly declined comment to questions about Bolsonaro’s visa status in the U.S.
Peru's protest 'deactivators' run toward tear gas to stop it
When police fire tear gas at protesters demanding the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, most run away.
A few, though, run toward the gas canisters as quickly as possible — to neutralize them.
These are the “deactivators.” Donning gas masks, safety goggles and thick gloves, these volunteers grab the hot canisters and toss them inside large plastic bottles filled with a mixture of water, baking soda and vinegar.
The deactivators made their debut in Peru street protests in 2020, inspired by protesters in Hong Kong who in 2019 unveiled new strategies to counteract the eye-stinging, breath-stealing effects of tear gas. With protesters in Lima facing a nearly daily fusillade of tear gas, more people have joined the ranks of deactivators trying to shield them and keep the demonstrations going.
Read more: Anger in rural areas fuel protests against Peru government
Peruvians have been protesting since early December, when former President Pedro Castillo was impeached after a failed attempt to dissolve Congress. His vice president, Boluarte, immediately took over — and has faced strong opposition ever since.
Fifty-eight people have died in connection with the unrest, including one police officer. Forty-six of the deaths occurred during direct clashes between protesters and police.
The protests have exposed deep divisions in the country between the urban elites and the rural poor. Demonstrations were first largely concentrated in the south, a long-neglected region of Peru that felt a particular kinship to Castillo’s humble background as a rural teacher from the Andean highlands. But earlier this month, thousands descended on Peru's capital, and police met them with tear gas. Lots and lots of tear gas.
On Thursday, as protesters gathered in downtown Lima, Alexander Gutiérrez Padilla, 45, was giving a brief course to anyone who would listen around Plaza San Martín about how to mix vinegar and baking soda into the water and how to grab the tear gas canisters most efficiently.
“If we don’t deactivate, people disperse and the protest breaks,” Gutiérrez said. “That’s why we’re pillars of this demonstration.”
Next to him was Wilfredo Huertas Vidal, 25, who has taken it upon himself to collect donations to buy gloves and other protective equipment and hand them out to those who want to help.
“Who wants gloves? Who wants gloves?” he yelled as he stood next to several large bottles of water, gas masks and eye goggles.
When protesters descended on Lima earlier this month, old networks were reactivated. A tactic first seen in Peru in late 2020 during protests against then-President Manuel Merino resurfaced.
Vladimir Molina, 34, who participated in the 2020 protests, now runs what he calls a “brigade.” It consists of around 60 people, including paramedics, deactivators and “front-line” activists who stand in the middle of protesters and police with shields, in an effort to block any pellets or tear gas police may fire into the crowd.
Read more: Peru judge orders 18-month detention for ousted president
“Every day more and more people are joining,” Molina said. Interest in his group is so great that he’s made it a requirement for anyone who wants to join to have their own equipment.
By tossing the hot tear gas cartridges into the water solution, “what they do is extinguish the pyrotechnical charge so the tear gas cannot come out anymore,” said Sven Eric Jordt, a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University.
Water alone should achieve what the protesters want, although the carbon dioxide created by mixing vinegar and baking soda could “form a foam bath that suffocates the charge” further, Jordt speculated.
It may be only a matter of time before authorities deploy methods to blunt the deactivators' effectiveness. Manufacturers are now developing tear gas with plastic cartridges that stick to the road so it “can’t be lifted up anymore,” Jordt said.
Fearful of being targeted by police and prosecutors, many of the deactivators prefer to remain anonymous, keeping their faces covered even when there’s no tear gas around.
Boluarte has given strong backing to law enforcement, and the government recently announced a bonus for police officers. Boluarte has characterized the work of police controlling the Lima protests as “immaculate,” despite their often indiscriminate firing of tear gas and pellets. In contrast, she says the demonstrations are violent and financed by drug-trafficking rings and illegal miners.
Andrea Fernández, 22, is new to deactivating tear gas.
“The truth is I love the adrenaline,” Fernández said shortly after grabbing a pair of gloves from Huertas and listening to the instructions closely.
She said she hadn’t been really interested in the country’s political crisis at first. Then the deaths started piling up.
“There are a lot of farmers who’ve come from lots of parts of Peru and they come here to march, face-to-face, but don’t have the necessary protection,” Fernández said.
Felix Davillo, 37, also says the casualties pushed him to become a deactivator.
“I made this decision for all the death that is going on in Puno right now,” Davillo said, referring to a region in Peru that has experienced some of the deadliest protests.
A general lack of protective equipment has also meant protesters have been injured by the widespread use of less lethal weapons.
From January 19 to 24, Doctors Without Borders treated 73 patients at the Lima protests suffering from exposure to tear gas, pellet wounds, contusions or psychological distress, the non-profit organization said.
The deactivators' increased chance of injury doesn’t scare Julio Incarocas Beliz, who grabbed one of the big water bottles in the plaza for his first day trying to diffuse tear gas.
“I served in the military and I’ve never been afraid,“ Incarocas, 28, said. “I’m fighting for my homeland.”
Brazil’s President Lula fires army chief in aftermath of capital uprising by far-right protesters
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva fired Brazil’s army chief Saturday just days after the leftist leader openly said that some military members allowed the Jan. 8 uprising in the capital by far-right protesters.
The official website of the Brazilian armed forces said Gen. Julio Cesar de Arruda had been removed as head of the army. He was replaced by Gen. Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva, who was head of the Southeast Military Command.
Lula, who did not comment publicly on the firing, met with Defense Minister Jose Mucio, chief of staff Rui Costa and the new army commander in Brasilia at the end of the day. Speaking to journalists afterward, Mucio said the Jan. 8 riots had caused “a fracture in the level of trust” in the army’s top levels and the government decided a change was needed.
Read more: Brazil charges dozens in pro-Bolsonaro riots; more expected
In recent weeks, Lula targeted the military with criticism after supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed through government buildings and destroyed public property in an attempt to keep Bolsonaro in office.
The uprising underlined the polarization in Brazil between the left and the right.
Lula said several times in public that there were definitely people in the army who allowed the rioting to occur, though he never cited Arruda.
During a breakfast with the press, Lula said earlier this week that “a lot of people from the military police and the armed forces were complicit” and had allowed protesters to enter the buildings with open doors. In another interview, the president said that “all the military involved in the coup attempt will be punished, no matter the rank.”
The comments were followed by Lula scheduling several meetings with the defense minister and the armed forces’ commanders. Mucio denied they had mentioned the Jan. 8 rioting, but he said relations between the military and the government needed adjustment.
On the eve of Arruda’s firing, a video of a Paiva speech earlier in the week was released in which he said the election results should be respected in order to guarantee democracy.
Rioters who stormed through the Brazilian Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court in Brasilia sought to have the military intervene and overturn Bolsonaro’s loss to Lula in the presidential election.
Read more: Days before new president, old divisions tearing at Brazil
In a video posted on social media from inside the presidential palace on the day of the attack, a colonel is seen trying to stop police from arresting Bolsonaro’s supporters who had invaded the building. He asks for patience from the military police, which report to the federal district’s government.
More than a thousand people were arrested on the day of the riot and the morning after the disturbance, which bore strong similarities to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Congress by mobs who wanted to overturn former President Donald Trump’s election loss.
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice earlier this month authorized adding Bolsonaro in its investigation into who incited the rioting in Brasilia as part of a broader crackdown to hold responsible parties to account.
According to the text of his ruling, Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted the request from the prosecutor-general’s office, which cited a video that Bolsonaro posted on Facebook two days after the riot. The video claimed Lula wasn’t voted into office, but rather was chosen by the Supreme Court and Brazil’s electoral authority.
Lula has been trying to reduce the high number of military officers in the government administration left by Bolsonaro. At least 140 military officers have been dismissed since Lula took office Jan. 1.
Attorneys: Jamaica’s Usain Bolt missing $12.7M from account
Lawyers for Usain Bolt, one of the world’s greatest sprinters, said Wednesday that more than $12.7 million is missing from his account with a private investment firm in Jamaica that authorities are investigating.
Attorney Linton P. Gordon provided The Associated Press with a copy of a letter sent to Stocks & Securities Limited demanding that the money be returned.
Gordon said Bolt’s account once had $12.8 million but now reflects a balance of only $12,000.
“If this is correct, and we are hoping it is not, then a serious act of fraud larceny or a combination of both have been committed against our client,” Bolt’s attorneys say in the letter.
They threaten civil and criminal action if the money is not returned within 10 days.
Stocks & Securities Limited did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On its website, the company asked that clients direct all urgent queries to Jamaica’s Financial Services Commission, which is investigating the firm.
“We understand that clients are anxious to receive more information and assure you that we are closely monitoring the matter throughout all the required steps and will alert our clients of the resolution as soon as that information is available,” the company said.
The company has said that it discovered the fraud earlier this month and that several of its clients may be missing millions of dollars.
Read more: Elizabeth Holmes takes the stand in her criminal fraud trial
Jamaica’s finance minister, Nigel Clarke, called the situation alarming but noted it was unusual.
“It is tempting to doubt our financial institutions, but I would ask that we don’t paint an entire hard working industry with the brush of a few very dishonest individuals,” he said.
Bolt’s lawyers sent the letter Monday, the same day that Jamaica’s Financial Services Commission announced it was appointing a special auditor to look into fraud allegations at Stocks & Securities Limited, which is based in the capital of Kingston.
On Tuesday, financial authorities said they were assuming temporary management of the private investment firm. It is allowed to keep operating but needs approval from the government for any transactions.
Bolt, who retired in 2017, holds the world records for the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4x100 meters.
Brazil charges dozens in pro-Bolsonaro riots; more expected
The office of Brazil’s prosecutor-general has presented its first charges against some of the thousands of people who authorities say stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former President Jair Bolsonaro's loss in the October election.
The prosecutors in the recently formed group to combat anti-democratic acts also have requested that the 39 defendants who ransacked Congress be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40 million reais ($7.7 million) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages.
The defendants have been charged with armed criminal association, violent attempt to subvert the democratic state of law, staging a coup and damage to public property, the prosecutor'general's office said in a written statement Monday night. Their identities have not yet been released.
More than a thousand people were arrested on the day of the Jan. 8 riot, which bore strong similarities to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Congress by mobs who wanted to overturn former President Donald Trump's loss in November's election.
Read more: Top Brazil court greenlights probe of Bolsonaro for riot
Rioters who stormed through the Brazilian Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court in the capital, Brasilia, sought to have the armed forces intervene and overturn Bolsonaro's loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The rioters “attempted, with the use of violence and serious threat, to abolish the democratic rule of law, preventing or restricting the exercise of constitutional powers,” according to an excerpt of charges included in a statement. “The ultimate objective of the attack ... was the installation of an alternative government regime.”
The attackers were not charged with terrorism because under Brazilian law such a charge must involve xenophobia or prejudice based on race, ethnicity or religion.
Read more: Brazil cracks down post-riot and vows to protect democracy
The prosecutor-general’s office sent its charges to the Supreme Court after the Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, last week provided a list of people accused of rampaging through Congress. Additional rioters are expected to be charged.