Fernando Cerimedo is arrested in Bolivia after shooting of lawyer in Santa Cruz

Two men dressed as delivery riders shot a Bolivian lawyer outside a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra on Monday night, according to The Guardian. Police say the suspected заказ behind the attack is Fernando Cerimedo, a political consultant who has worked with prominent right-leaning campaigns across Latin America; he was arrested at the city’s airport before boarding a flight reportedly bound for Buenos Aires.

The case lands in a region where politics increasingly runs through consultants, social-media operations and cross-border networks that move faster than parties and ministries. Cerimedo’s public profile has been built less on holding office than on brokering access: The Guardian describes him as a strategist behind Javier Milei’s 2023 campaign in Argentina and as someone credited with helping secure Donald Trump’s endorsement of Honduras’s Nasry “Tito” Asfura. That kind of work produces few paper trails and even fewer formal chains of command, which can be convenient for candidates when messaging succeeds and equally convenient when it becomes toxic.

Investigators say the victim, Nadia Beller, told police she had been lured to the hotel by anonymous messages promising evidence of alleged crimes by Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales. Surveillance footage reviewed by authorities reportedly shows the shooters arriving in helmets and firing at close range before fleeing; Beller survived and was taken to hospital. A local police commander told The Guardian that investigators were considering a romantic relationship and personal dispute between Beller and Cerimedo as part of the motive, a reminder that the same operational habits used in political warfare—anonymity, intermediaries, deniable communications—also fit neatly into private vendettas.

Cerimedo’s lawyer denied he ordered the attack and said his client had travelled to Santa Cruz to visit Beller in hospital, not to flee. Bolivia’s president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, expressed solidarity with Beller and said his administration would not interfere; a presidential spokesperson said Cerimedo was a personal consultant to the president but held no government post. The boundary between “inside” and “outside” government is part of what makes such figures useful: they can be close enough to shape strategy, and far enough away that accountability can be treated as optional.

The Guardian notes that Cerimedo has also been indicted in Brazil over alleged involvement linked to the attempted coup around former president Jair Bolsonaro, and that he livestreamed false claims about Brazil’s 2022 election result days after Lula da Silva’s victory. Those episodes sit in the background of a criminal investigation that, on paper, is about a shooting in Santa Cruz—yet they also explain why a local crime story instantly becomes a regional one.

Cerimedo was detained before boarding his flight, while the woman police say was targeted remained in hospital.