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A Bolivian judge ordered preventive imprisonment for Gabriela Zapata, President Evo Morales' former girlfriend, whom the government is accusing of illicit enrichment and influence peddling.

At a Sunday court hearing, a judge ordered that Zapata to be held at the Obrajes women's prison in La Paz.

The Attorney General's Office asked that the businesswoman, who was arrested on Friday, be jailed as a potential flight risk — an argument the judge accepted.

The relationship between Morales and Zapata, and the contracts that the firm she worked for up until a week ago (China's CAMC Engineering, or Camce), were first reported by journalist Carlos Valverde, whom the government has suggested was directed by the White House.

"It's an attack put together by the U.S. and carried over by Carlos Valverde, by some media outlets and also social media," said the minister of the Presidency Juan Ramon Quintana a couple of weeks ago. "The bottom line is to cut out Evo Morales' head."

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Meanwhile, the Bolivian government on Sunday called upon Zapata to present the son she had with Morales before a judge this week to prove that the boy is alive, as a relatives and an attorney of the businesswoman recently asserted.

"We demand that Mrs. Gabriela Zapata present that boy before the ... judge ... (on Monday) so that we Bolivians may know what the truth is," the minister of Transparency and the Struggle Against Corruption, Lenny Valdivia, told state-run media.

Valdivia said that the "official information" the government has is that Morales knew of the boy's 2007 birth, but then "they told him that this (child) was sick" and that he died shortly thereafter.

Based on reporting by EFE

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