Peru: Keiko Fujimori under investigation because a former adviser is accused of wanting to interfere in the work of the electoral tribunal

Peruvian prosecutor José Domingo Pérez opened a new investigation against the presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori after the publication of some audios in which the former presidential adviser imprisoned Vladimir Montesinos He proposes to bribe the electoral judges to win the second presidential round on June 6.

Pérez, who is part of the Lava Jato investigation team in Peru, opened investigations against Fujimori, his party, Fuerza Popular, and “Those responsible” for the alleged commission of the crime of money laundering, for a maximum period of 36 months.

The prosecutor said that there is “information from audio files containing telephone communications” between Montesinos, former soldier Pedro Rejas and lawyer Guillermo Sendón on the “financing of the presidential campaign of the Fuerza Popular”.

The start of the preliminary proceedings on this case was revealed on Monday by Fujimori, who said on his social networks that Pérez “launches new program to cover the case of ‘Los Dinámicos del Centro'”, another investigation carried out by the prosecution this time on an alleged irregular financing of the campaign of his electoral rival, the leftist Pedro Castillo.

The right-wing candidate argued that Pérez’s “desire for figuration” “has no limits” and, for this reason, he summoned “Vladimiro Montesinos as protagonist to ensure the dissemination and coverage” of the new procedure.

“The prosecutor who has already called for my imprisonment four times returns to the attack by opening an investigation into the audios armed by Montesinos and his friends accusing me of money laundering”, he argued with reference to the other investigation that the prosecution is following for the alleged irregular financing of its electoral campaigns of 2011 and 2016.

Fujimori has already entered preventive prison twice for this investigation, which is currently awaiting the judicial decision on the opening of an oral trial.

Regarding Pérez, the candidate assured “that his obsession and his desire for figuration were enough“And announced that he will ask the prosecution” and other bodies to exclude this new case to prevent his obvious bias from distorting this investigation. ” with which, he says, he will collaborate as he has done in “more than 20 years”.

The newspaper The Republic indicated that the prosecutor supported his investigation in the transcript of a recording of the telephone conversations of Montesinos, who is serving 25 years in prison at the Naval Base of Callao.

In the audio it is stated that Fujimori and Fuerza Popular “They received a lot of money, but they threw it away (stole)”, after which Montesinos says that right-wing businessmen and politicians should be asked for money to fund the set aside appeals. by Fujimori against the acts of the second electoral ballot. round that disputed with Castillo.

Fujimori made these objections in an attempt to overturn some 200,000 votes in areas where his rival got an overwhelming vote and after claiming a “systematic fraud“Of which, so far, no reliable evidence has been presented.

The official election tally indicated that Castillo won with just over 40,000 votes than Fujimori, even if examining the challenges that the candidate presented still prevents the electoral jury from proclaiming a winner.

The prosecutor also considered that “the alleged” criminal activity “of which he accuses the Fuerza Popular party in the process of previous campaigns has not ceased and declared that this “would be qualified as an offense of money laundering, in the terms of conversion and transfer, and concealment and possession”.

On July 1, the former military Pedro Rejas He admitted to having participated in a plan devised by Montesinos, the former “strongman” of the government of Alberto Fujimori, Keiko’s father, to obtain, through bribes, that the candidate be recognized as the winner of the elections in Peru.

He argued that “main interest“By Montesinos “It was to support the candidacy” of Keiko and indicated that “it was supposed” that he “had to communicate the request for money to the Fujimori”, but on the contrary he preferred “to tell everything because he did not want to go to jail for corruption. “

He added that during the recent campaign he also learned that Montesinos was leading, from prison, a group of people who supported Fujimori’s candidacy with messages disseminated by social networks and by telephone with the support of an intelligence expert.

However, after the results of the second round, Montesinos called Rejas to tell him that three of the four judges on the National Elections (JNE) jury should be bribed with a million dollars, the highest electoral body responsible for proclaiming the results.

(With information from EFE)

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