Rosenberg was killed by gunmen while bicycling. On the video, he presents a web of corruption allegations against Colom; the president's wife, Sandra de Colom; and associates, saying they were behind the killing in mid-April of a Guatemalan industrialist, Khalil Musa, and his daughter, Marjorie.
Dressed in a navy jacket and light blue tie and seated at a desk, Rosenberg refers to Colom and those closest to him as "thieves," "cowards" and "killers." He said he could be killed because he represented Musa and his daughter.
"The reason I am dead at the moment you see this message is simply and only because until the end I was the lawyer for Khalil Musa and his daughter, Marjorie Musa," Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg said Colom had named Musa, a coffee grower and textile manufacturer, as a director of Guatemala's Rural Development Bank, or Banrural, in March. But Musa refused to go along with illicit activities that included money laundering and embezzlement, Rosenberg said.
The attorney accused the president of links to drug traffickers -- a charge floated by Colom's opponents during the 2007 campaign -- and of siphoning Banrural funds for his wife's "phantom" projects. Rosenberg did not offer evidence.
There was no immediate sign that the president's tenure was in peril.
Colom, the first leftist elected to lead Guatemala in more than 50 years, has insisted that he will not step down. He was elected over a retired army general, Otto Perez Molina, after promising a better life for the country's poor and indigenous residents.
"I have a clean heart and this government is not a thug or murderer," he said this week. "I am not a murderer."
Colom said "Machiavellian minds" were behind a scheme to undermine him, but he did not name them.
Rosenberg made the video with the help of journalist Mario David Garcia, who distributed copies at Rosenberg's funeral Monday. It was posted on YouTube and Internet pages of Guatemalan news organizations and drew so many viewers that it caused some sites to crash.
Garcia told fellow journalists that Rosenberg had planned to go public with his allegations against Colom on Monday.
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ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
