Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was detained on Wednesday on charges that he “enabled illicit enrichment” by allegedly allowing state funds earmarked for Indigenous communities to be transferred into government officials’ personal accounts.

Arce served as Bolivia’s president until last month, when he handed the sash to the centre-right former senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, who won the runoff in an election that ended nearly 20 years of dominance by the leftwing Movement for Socialism, or Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).

The new interior minister, Marco Antonio Oviedo, said Arce was being investigated as the “principal person responsible” for at least 360m bolivianos (£39.2m) in economic losses involving a fund intended to channel hydrocarbon tax revenues into development projects for

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