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Peru’s Attorney General’s Office assured on Wednesday that the constitutional corruption complaint filed a week ago against President Pedro Castillo contains more than “190 evidentiary elements” that support the accusation of being the alleged leader of a criminal organization.
“This complaint contains a detailed series of accusations and each accusation has an evidentiary correlate. This body of evidence of more than 190 elements supports in detail each allegation so that the defense can exercise its legitimate right,” said Supreme Deputy Prosecutor Marco Huamán during a briefing with the foreign press accredited in Lima.
Huamán, the coordinator of the Specialized Area for Constitutional Complaints, remarked that “the law does not empower” prosecutors to advance the terms of such evidence, although he reiterated that the complaint filed by the Attorney General, Patricia Benavides, “is the result of preliminary proceedings or acts of investigation that have been authorized by a supreme judge.”
He emphasized that now “it is the sole and exclusive power of the Congress” to develop the process to reach a final pronouncement on the issue, although he reiterated that “the procedural norm establishes the confidentiality of the investigations.”
“Whether or not to disclose this evidentiary material is up to Congress,” he argued before saying that prosecutors “beyond that” cannot “enter.”
Corruption Complaint by Peru’s Attorney General’s Office
Prosecutor Benavides sent a week ago a constitutional complaint to Congress against Castillo as alleged perpetrator of the crimes of aggravated criminal organization due to his condition of leader, aggravated influence peddling and accomplice to crimes against public administration in the form of collusion (fraud).
The Executive and Castillo’s defense argue that Article 117 of the Constitution establishes that the president can only be charged during the exercise of his functions for four specific cases, including treason or impeding elections, but not for corruption or common crimes.
During Wednesday’s meeting, senior prosecutor Rafael Vela, coordinator of the Specialized Attorney’s Offices for Money Laundering, added that the complaint “is undoubtedly an unprecedented situation” in his country, since it involves for the first time a sitting governor.
However, he believed that Benavides has followed “the right path” in her decision and defended that prosecutors do not look “at political ideology”, but rather investigate “serious cases.”
Vela said that the Money Laundering Attorney’s Office “had an active participation” in this preliminary investigation process, by taking the confession of businesswoman Karelim Lopez, an interest manager who had links with the upper echelons of power in recent years.
The prosecutor, who is leading the investigations of the “Lava Jato” and “Odebrecht” cases in Peru, considered that, after the expert reports carried out, “it was fully justified” to investigate the president and hoped for “no impunity to be granted.”
“The investigation into the president also implies his right of defense,” he remarked, adding that prosecutors hope the investigation continues.
Huamán added, in this regard, that “evidentiary material has been gathered that allows us to affirm that the procedural stage of the process has been fulfilled.”
The complaint must now be reviewed by the Subcommittee of Constitutional Accusations of Congress, which has also requested the Constitutional Court to interpret the country’s Magna Carta to determine whether the accusation against the head of government can be pursued.
