BOLIVIA’S Attorney General Wilfredo Chavez has challenged the Organisation of American States (OAS) to show proof that it carried out an audit of the country’s 2019 elections, which, at the time, it condemned as fraudulent.

Mr Chavez denounced the Washington-based organisation on Tuesday, saying that its dubious report into the poll had led to the ousting of then-president Evo Morales and plunged Bolivia into chaos.

He said that despite promises from the OAS, it has failed to present the Bolivian government with any documentation showing that it carried out proper investigations into the elections.

“Bolivia has been the object of a scam — and I can say it with that clarity because the OAS did not deliver any audit report … there was no audit,” Mr Chavez said.

In its final report into the elections issued in December 2019, the OAS insisted that there has been “intentional manipulation” and “serious irregularities” that made it impossible to validate the results originally issued by the Bolivian electoral authorities.

OAS general secretary Luis Almagro claimed that his team had conducted “exceptional and professional work” in completing the audit.

Its report was critical in swinging public opinion against the democratically elected government in La Paz, paving the way for the ousting of Mr Morales in a US-backed coup.

But in March 2020 researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data and science lab said there was “not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find.” They added that their investigations found that the OAS report was deeply flawed.

This conclusion was backed by former president of Bolivia’s National Electoral Court Antonio Costas Sitic, who said last month that the OAS document was “an extremely superficial report, not technical at all. It’s not an audit.” 

He hinted that the report may have been manipulated by external forces, adding that Mr Almagro could be prosecuted for being behind a report that caused “such havoc” in Bolivia.