The administration of Bolivian President Evo Morales announced on Monday, Aug. 27, that it plans to sue the Brazilian magazine Veja for an article published in June linking Minister of the Presidency Juan Ramón Quintana to drug trafficking, reported the website Brasil 247.
In the article "Bolivia: The Cocaine Republic," the magazine claimed reports from a Bolivian police intelligence unit showed Quintana had direct contact with the Brazilian drug trafficker Maximiliano Dorado Munhoz Filho in 2010, according to the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. At the time, the minister directed the Agency for Development of Macro-regions and Border Areas.
According to the newspaper La Prensa Grafica, Quintana will file his own suit against the magazine, alongside the government's. Veja's publisher would not comment on the lawsuits.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
