Odebrecht case in Peru: judge rejected prosecutor’s request for Keiko Fujimori’s return to prison

The judge of Peru, Victor Zuniga, denied on Monday the return to prison of the presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori while the lawsuit against him lasts various corruption offenses as requested by the Office of the Prosecutor, although he has imposed severe restrictions that will prevent him from meeting his closest associates.

Judge Zúñiga, of the Fourth Permanent National Court of Preparatory Investigation specializing in Organized crimesaid the prosecutor’s office’s request unfounded despite the fact that Fujimori She violated the rules of conduct imposed on her upon her release in April 2020.

However, the judge said he had not accepted the request for return to prison because no judicial “warning” had been made official on this issue to the presidential candidate, as required by law.

In this sense, Zúñiga also decreed that Fujimori must follow “the strict respect of all restrictive measures” which were dictated to him on his release from prison. and he sternly warned that “if he does not do so, he will be placed in preventive detention again”.

The magistrate also pointed out that despite what was said by Fujimori’s defense attorney Giuliana Loza, the bans include contacting any witnesses related to cases she is under investigation, among which appear Miguel Torres and Lourdes Flores.

Torres and Flores are among the candidate’s closest collaborators in her fight for the cancellation of more than 200,000 votes cast in the presidential election on 6 June.

The prosecutor of the ‘Lava Jato’ task force, Joseph Domingo Perez, had asked the past June 11 Fujimori’s preventive detention, considering that allegedly violated the terms of his probation.

The prosecution also accuses Fujimori that “He does not respect the restriction not to communicate with witnesses, as it has been noted as a public and notorious fact that he communicates with witness Miguel Torres Morales”.

Fujimori, who lost the vote against Pedro Castillo by just over 40,000 votes, denounced the existence of “table fraud” and “generalized irregularities” by his rival, without however having provided reliable evidence of their accusations.

Torres and Flores were key players in his campaign to seek acceptance of the thesis of this “fraud” by public opinion and the National Electoral Jury (JNE).

Last March, after more than four years of research, The Peruvian prosecution has requested the opening of an oral trial and a sentence of 30 years and 10 months in prison against the leader of the Fuerza Popular for the offenses of money laundering, organized crime, obstruction of justice and false declaration in administrative proceedings.

For this case, Fujimori has already entered preventive prison for more than a year (October 2018-November 2019), managed to get out a few months after an appeal and then returned to prison for another five months in 2020.

In April 2020, she was released under restrictive legal measures because of the risk of contracting covid-19 that her stay in prison entailed.

Only a victory in the presidential elections on June 6 would prevent Fujimori from going to trial for these crimes.

Even the Peruvian electoral authorities They must review the nullity claims promoted by Fujimori so that they can declare a winner.

To date, most of the more than 800 demands made by Fujimori in this legal maneuver to reverse the electoral results have been rejected by the electoral juries due to technical flaws, but also because there is no evidence to support for such a request.

(With information from EFE and Europa Press)

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