When anti-corruption protests and dedicated prosecutors helped chase Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina from power and then into prison this month, many Latin Americans nodded in approval, and not a few in envy.

Barely a news cycle passes in the region without some cabal of political chiefs and cronies getting caught with their hands in the public till. A recent report by Global Financial Integrity pegged Latin America for nearly a fifth of the yearly global outflow of illicit funds, worth 3.3 percent of regional GDP, from 2003 to 2012.

And yet bringing Latin American political leaders to justice for graft, kickbacks and payola is rare, and locking them up is almost unheard of.