Billionaire proposes US$1 million reward for Bolivia’s ex-president Evo Morales

Evo Morales, who is subject of an arrest warrant, responded that Marcelo Claure was crazy or foolish

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Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales addressing supporters via video conference last month. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:58am, 10 Feb 2025Updated: 2:28pm, 10 Feb 2025

Bolivian-American billionaire Marcelo Claure has floated the idea of offering a US$1 million reward for ex-president Evo Morales, who is the subject of an arrest warrant.

Claure, in a post on X late on Saturday, said he would think about the reward, above a photograph of a wanted poster for Evo Morales, implying, but without saying as much, that the reward would be for information leading to the former president’s arrest. Claure, a former COO of SoftBank, now manages his own investment fund and family office.

The billionaire has been wading deeper into Bolivia’s election cycle, commissioning nationwide polls and saying he will back a yet-to-be-decided right-wing candidate to defeat the ruling socialist MAS party. On Saturday he said the government of Luis Arce, a former ally of Morales turned rival, is making the country a joke and said that Bolivia was seen as uninvestable.

A Bolivian court last month ordered the arrest of the former president, who is being investigated for allegedly having a child with a minor. The government has accused groups linked to Morales of responsibility for attacks on the police.

Morales, speaking on his Sunday radio show, responded that Claure was either crazy or foolish, La Razon reported. Morales has not left the Tropico region of Bolivia’s Cochabamba since October because of the arrest warrant against him, but he remained politically active in that area.

The country is suffering an economic crisis amid shortages of fuel and foreign currency. At the same time, the ruling socialist party is divided between supporters of President Arce and those loyal to Morales.

Arce last year was forced to deny that he had faked a coup against his government in a bid to shore up his popularity. The fiscal deficit was near 11 per cent of GDP last year, Finance Minister Marcelo Montenegro said on Thursday, and year-on-year inflation reached 12 per cent in January.