No asylum request from John McAfee: Guatemala

Guatemala said it has received no asylum request from American Internet security pioneer John McAfee, who is wanted in Belize for questioning over his neighbour’s murder.

The former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, now a weathered 67-year-old, went on the run from his home on the Belizean paradise island of Ambergris Caye after neighbour Gregory Faull was murdered on November 11.

McAfee and girlfriend Sam Vanegas, 20, managed to evade Belizean authorities for more than three weeks, making it across the border into Guatemala over the weekend after devising elaborate ruses to confuse police.

“We are applying for political asylum,” McAfee told journalists in Guatemala City Tuesday, hours after securing the services of Telesforo Guerra, a former Guatemalan attorney general who is also Vanegas’s uncle.

But Foreign Minister Harold Caballeros told reporters yesterday that “so far, there has been no official petition.

We are monitoring closely... to see what his request may be.”

“So far, all of what we have heard has been through the media,” the top Guatemalan diplomat said.

On his blog, whoismcafee.com, McAfee said he would hold a press conference today in Guatemala City.

McAfee amassed an estimated $100 million fortune during the early days of the Internet in the 1990s, designing the pioneering anti-virus software that bears his name, before opting out to become an intrepid adventure-seeker.

Faull, a 52-year-old Florida expat, was discovered on November 11 by his housekeeper with a 9mm slug in his head, lying in a pool of his own blood.

No charges have been laid against McAfee, who was embroiled in a bitter neighbourly dispute with the deceased and has so far only been declared a “person of interest” in the case.

Three of McAfee’s associates have been remanded in custody for alleged firearm offences and are expected in court in Belize on December 19.

McAfee decamped to Belize in 2009 after losing most of his fortune due to bad investments and the financial crisis.

According to a raft of profiles in the US media, his lifestyle became increasingly extreme as he descended into a hedonistic binge centred on experimental drug use and young prostitutes.