Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera (born 24 September 1951) is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 45th president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004.
He took office on 14 January 2000, representing the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), the party then led by retired general and deposed military ruler Efraín Ríos Montt (1926–2018).
In 2014, ten years after his departure from the presidency, Portillo would plead guilty to corruption charges in a United States court.
[citation needed] In April 1995, Portillo and another seven of the DCG's 13 deputies, left the party to become independents after the parliamentary group was accused of corruption.
When Ríos Montt was constitutionally barred from running in the 12 November presidential election because he had previously taken power through a coup d'etat, the FRG chose Portillo as their candidate.
[6][citation needed] In July 1998, the FRG voted for him to be their presidential candidate the following year, having decided not to nominate Ríos Montt.
Portillo launched a campaign in favor of bringing morality into political life, to implacably fight corruption, and to defend the indigenous population and the poor campesinos against the small, urban, white elite.
[citation needed] On the day of his investiture, Portillo said that Guatemala was "on the edge of collapse" and promised a thorough government investigation into corruption.
While he showed determination to see through his regenerative and progressive program, his government soon became overwhelmed by the reality of the political and mafia corruption in the country.
After a long process, Mexico's foreign ministry approved Portillo's extradition back to Guatemala on 30 October 2006.
Portillo and his associates were absolved of all embezzlement charges on 9 May 2011 by a Guatemalan court that determined that prosecutors, Guatemala's Public Ministry, did not present sufficient evidence to convict the former president.
[19] On 18 March 2014, former President Portillo pleaded guilty at a hearing before United States District Judge Robert P.