RICO’s Q — At 86 years old, former president of Costa Rica and former secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, said that for years he lived with a silent fear: not to live to see the end of a legal process that consumed 25 years of his life.
“I always feared I wouldn’t live to see this time,” he confessed on Friday after hearing the acquittal that brings to a close, at least in this procedural stage, the trial in the Instituto Nacional de Seguros (INS) Reinsurance case.
The decision was by the Criminal Court of Finance and Public Service, based in the Second Judicial Circuit of San Jose, after a trial that extended from August 2025 until May 29, 2026.
During the reading of the ruling, Judge Mercedes Muñoz explained that the analysis of the evidence made it possible to determine that the investigated resources came from private funds belonging to international insurance companies and brokers, and therefore could not be considered public assets.
The scene has something of a historical paradox about it.
The man who arrived in Washington in 2004 to assume one of the most important political posts on the continent ended up abruptly and voluntarily, returning to Costa Rica. He resigned as the 8th Secretary General of the OAS amidst the ICE-Alcatel scandal, was arrested in handcuffs as he stepped off the plane at the Juan Santamaría International Airport that brought him back to the country, dragged off in a “perrera” (prisoner transport, one of three used to mislead the waiting media), and spent several months isolated in pretrial detention, at the maximum-security La Reforma prison.
More than two decades later, the same man, now with more lines etched on his face and speaking more deliberately, heard a court conclude that there was no evidence to convict him of embezzlement in the Reinsurance case.
Between those two moments, 25 years of investigations, appeals, annulments, changes of criteria, judicial delays, and an endless legal battle unfolded, a battle that even survived the pandemic.
That is why, when he addressed the press on Friday, Rodríguez did not speak only of himself.
“It has been a very difficult process in which my family and I, my friends, and the Costa Rican judicial system have suffered,” he stated.
His speech had the tone of someone looking backward rather than forward.
What the Judges Said
He said that what impacted him most about the verdict was not the acquittal itself, but hearing the judge state that there was not a single fact linking him to a criminal plot. According to Rodríguez, that statement gave meaning to years of personal and public suffering.
The former president summarized his state of mind in three words: gratitude, admiration, and regret.
His gratitude was directed toward God.
“God left me here so that I could be present,” he expressed, noting that he has already surpassed the average life expectancy of a Costa Rican man by several years.
His admiration was for his lawyer, Christian Arguedas, whom he described as a friend who voluntarily offered his help when few were willing to do so.
But it was his regret that revealed the most intimate dimension of the day.
His wife, former First Lady Lorena Clare, passed away in March of this year. She had been his champion throughout much of this long legal process. She wasn’t in the courtroom this Friday to hear the outcome.
Her absence permeated every word he spoke.
The Reinsurance Case
The Reinsurance case was just one chapter in a long legal saga that marked the last two decades of Rodríguez’s public life. He had previously faced the ICE-Alcatel case, for which he was convicted in the first instance in 2011 and later acquitted after a series of appeals and judicial reviews.
During those years, he went from being the 43rd President of Costa Rica (1998-2002), a political leader with some 30 years in various government positions before his presidency, and Secretary General of the OAS (15 September 2004 – 15 October 2004), to becoming one of the most visible symbols of the fight against corruption in Costa Rica and, at the same time, one of the most persistent defendants in the Costa Rican judicial system.
The sentence handed down this Friday does not necessarily represent the end of the matter. Despite the acquittal, the case could still have further legal developments. The ruling can still be appealed.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that it will await the full text of the ruling to analyze the legal basis for the decision and determine what appeals it will file.
However, for Rodríguez, the day carried the emotional weight of a long-awaited closure.
After 25 years of legal proceedings, headlines, hearings, and uncertainty, the former president arrived at the courthouse carrying the weight of a story that began when he was just over 60 years old and ended when he was 86.
Along the way, he lost positions, reputation, time, health, and close friends, as he has recounted on countless occasions.
What was the Reinsurance Case about?
The case concerns alleged improper payments that UK reinsurance companies reportedly made to public officials in 2001 to become the reinsurance providers for the State insurer, the INS. The case was brought by the Deputy Prosecutor’s Office for Probity, Transparency, and Anti-Corruption (FAPTA).
The investigation was divided into two files, which were consolidated in August 2013. One addresses an apparent payment of US$2.1 million allegedly made by the London-based reinsurer PWS between 1998 and 2002; The other case involves alleged commissions and trips financed by the brokerage firms Guy Carpenter and Willis Re during 2001.
The case has accumulated more than two decades of investigations, appeals, and delays. The preliminary phase alone in the Criminal Court took 12 years and seven months. In 2013, a court dismissed the case, deeming the use of bank records from Panama, the United States, and the United Kingdom illegal; however, a Criminal Court overturned that ruling in 2014 and ordered the proceedings to resume, although it upheld the exclusion of said records.
The case went to trial several times, but the decisions were successively overturned or appealed between 2015 and 2018. The trial, originally scheduled for 2021, was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to translate 4,809 pages of documents written in English into Spanish. In February 2022, the Constitutional Chamber granted an appeal for protection filed by the former president and ordered the Judiciary to expedite the case. The trial finally began in August 2025 and concluded in May 2026.
Also acquitted were the former head of Reinsurance at the INS, Álvaro Antonio Acuña Prado; the former head of Reinsurance at the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), Ronald Bonilla Rodríguez; as well as former ICE officials Antonio Corrales Moya and Ramón Lara Molinari.
The Other Major Case: The ICE-Alcatel Case
The Reinsurance case is not the only criminal case Rodríguez has faced. The former president was also a central figure in the ICE-Alcatel case, related to the alleged payment of bribes by the French company Alcatel to obtain a cellular phone contract with ICE in 2001, valued at approximately US$149 million.
He was accused of instigating the collection of bribes and of having received more than US$819,000.
In April 2011, Rodríguez was sentenced to five years in prison and a twelve-year ban from holding public office, in what was seen as a landmark ruling against a former head of state.
However, in December 2012, the Court of Appeals overturned the sentence.
The Third Chamber overturned that acquittal in November 2014 and ordered a review of the case, which resulted in a new acquittal in December 2015. This new acquittal was based on the fact that the testimony of former ICE executive José Antonio Lobo, the prosecution’s star witness, had been obtained illegally.
The acquittal became final when, in December 2017, the Criminal Court rejected the prosecution’s appeal for failing to meet formal requirements.
A Personal Note
The former president and I never met officially, but we exchanged a handful of emails — ones where he wrote with real frustration about what he saw as a deep injustice, both from Costa Rica’s legal system and the media, back when I was reporting the case on Insidecostarica.com, the go-to publication for all things before the Q.
I believed him. At least believed that the story was more complicated — or at least truer than the version that everyone else was buying.
I crossed paths with him a few times over the years. What struck me wasn’t anything he said or did — it was the silence around him. Ordinary Costa Ricans had just… turned away. Like he’d gone invisible. Like looking at him was something to be ashamed of.
At the airport is the moment I keep coming back to. He walked through, and not one person reached out to shake his hand. So I did. A small thing. Probably meaningless to him — I doubt he even remembers it. But I do.