Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bolivia President Says Jacob Ostreicher Guilty

Jacob Ostreicher’s flight from house arrest in Bolivia to the United States proves he is guilty of money laundering, Bolivian President Evo Morales said.

“From the moment he fled he’s a confessed delinquent because why would anyone escape if they didn’t commit a crime?” Morales told reporters on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

It is Morales’ first comments on the Ostreicher’s escape from Bolivia earlier this month.

Ostreicher, who had been held in prison and then under house arrest in Bolivia since 2011, has not been seen in public since reportedly returning to the U.S. on Dec. 16.

Ostreicher, who had a flooring business in New York, invested money with a group involved in a rice-growing venture in Bolivia and was managing the business when he was arrested on suspicion of money laundering. He also was accused of doing business with drug traffickers.

However, in June, Bolivian authorities arrested 15 people — including government officials — on charges of engineering his arrest in hopes of extracting cash payment.

Despite those charges, Bolivia did not release Ostreicher, a haredi Orthodox father of five, and his case drew the attention of leading lawmakers in Congress, including Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Sean Penn, the movie actor and human rights activist.

On Dec. 18, Penn told the AP that he was with Ostreicher and that he was receiving medical care in an undisclosed location after being removed from Bolivia in a “humanitarian operation” in order to save him “from the corrupt prosecution and imprisonment he was suffering in Bolivia.”

Family members told local media that Ostreicher had been missing for a week before they learned he had entered the United States.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.