Guatemalan government has paid $18 million to a shady Israeli company for supposed "miracle formula" that will rescue a heavily polluted lake from becoming the lake in the Simpsons movie. Article in spanish, English facts in comments.

The Facts:

Immense quantities of residential and industrial sewage from the Guatemalan capital and it's surroundings are dumped into this lake with very little effort to avoid or regulate. Not to mention the annual 500 thousand tons of sediment that also go into the lake thanks to mining in the lake's surroundings.

The current Guatemalan government, whose administrators have recently been under constant questioning for the misuse of funds and their inexplicable wealth have paid approximately 18 million US dollars for the purchase and applicaton of some sort of miracle chemical that will rescue the lake.

The purveyor of this miraculous formula is an Israeli company named M. Tarcic Engineering Ltd. From which very little is known. (I've googled them and all results just point back to this current event in Guatemala).

The supposed address for this company's offices in Guatemala were actually for a different company, which is represented by a person who recently made a deal with the Guatemalan government for about 1.2 million dollars for some tech services . A couple of stickers reading M Tarcic were placed at the door just a few days ago. When adjacent businesses were asked if they knew anything about M Tarcic they just said that place was being remodeled.

The supposed "inventor" of this miracle potion is an Israeli scientist named Hanan Elraz whose products have been deemed "hazardous" by Israeli health authorities.

The Israeli embassy claims to have no say in Israeli companies' dealings with Guatemala, despite their embassador being present during a conference where representatives of M Tarcic defended their million-dollar product.

Guatemalan Scientists and professors from a prestigious local university had expressed their opposition to the application of this "formula" without further research but were ignored. They also expressed their intention to get more information on Hanan Eraz.

/r/worldnews Thread Link - elperiodico.com.gt