Adviser to far-right Latin American leaders arrested for allegedly plotting to kill girlfriend

A senior adviser to many of Latin America’s new wave of far-right leaders has been arrested for allegedly masterminding the attempted murder of his girlfriend.

The businessman and political consultant Fernando Cerimedo, 42, had been working as an adviser to the Bolivian president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, and was one of the main strategists behind Javier Milei’s campaign in Argentina’s 2023 presidential election.

He has previously been described as Maga’s man in Latin America – a reference to Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement – and is credited with helping secure the US president’s endorsement of the rightwing Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who won Honduras’s presidential election in December.

On Tuesday morning, Cerimedo landed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and was arrested before boarding another flight reportedly bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina. According to police, he was detained on suspicion of ordering a shooting attack on the Bolivian lawyer Nadia Beller, who local media reported had been in a relationship with Cerimedo – who is married – since last year.

Surveillance footage showed two men dressed as delivery riders and wearing helmets open fire on Beller on Monday night outside a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She survived and was taken to hospital.

Beller told police she had been lured to the hotel after receiving anonymous messages promising to hand over evidence of alleged crimes committed by Bolivia’s leftwing former president Evo Morales, who is subject to two outstanding arrest warrants and remains sheltered in a coca-growing region.

Beller said she believed the attack had been a trap orchestrated by Cerimedo.

The local police commander, Col David Gómez, told local media that investigators were working on the hypothesis that Beller and Cerimedo had been in a romantic relationship and had had “a personal dispute” in the days before the attack.

Cerimedo’s lawyer, Ernesto Giraldes, said his client had not been not trying to flee to Argentina and had travelled to Santa Cruz de la Sierra specifically to visit Beller in hospital and denied he was behind the attack.

The presidential spokesperson, José Luis Gálvez, said Cerimedo had acted as Paz Pereira’s “personal consultant” but did not hold a government post. The Bolivian president expressed “solidarity” with Beller and posted on X that his administration would offer “zero interference” in the investigation.

Cerimedo had a prominent role in Milei’s campaign strategy and had boasted that he had been the one to suggest the self-styled libertarian take a chainsaw to campaign rallies, but he has never held a post in the Argentinian government.

In Brazil, Cerimedo was indicted by federal police over his alleged involvement in the attempted coup led by the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

In 2022, five days after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the election and Bolsonaro refused to concede and plotted ways to remain in power, Cerimedo held a live stream titled “Brazil Was Stolen”, in which he presented an anonymous dossier containing false claims about the vote.

Brazil’s federal police later concluded that it had been a premeditated operation coordinated with Brazilian military officers and Bolsonaro aides, who had provided Cerimedo with the report. Prosecutors, however, declined to bring charges against him, saying investigators had failed to produce evidence to show that Cerimedo knew the report contained fabricated information.