“I am collateral damage in a fight for power,” said Mateo Castañeda Segovia, surrounded by the press, before being taken to the dungeons of the Lima Prefecture. For a week now, President Dina Boluarte’s lawyer has been urging a defense to get rid of a mystery that accuses him of being the legal arm of a mafia headed by Nicanor Boluarte, the Peruvian president’s older brother.
Apurim native by birth and, therefore, a countryman of the head of state, Mateo Castañeda was immersed in the public eye in recent months as a result of Rolexgate, the scandal of luxury watches not declared by Dina Boluarte. In one of her messages to the Nation, Pedro Castillo’s successor justified her delay in giving explanations to the public due to an express recommendation from Castañeda. “He told me: ‘Let’s first declare before the competent authority and then go to the country,’” she said.
According to the prosecutor’s investigations, almost in the same period in which he was developing his client’s legal strategy, Mateo Castañeda held meetings with two police colonels from the command that assisted the Special Team of Prosecutors against Corruption in Power. Walter Lozano was offered a promotion to the rank of general in exchange for shelving the investigation that has been ongoing against Nicanor Boluarte for half a year for allegedly having directed an item of 20 million soles (5.4 million dollars) in favor of a district of the Cajamarca mountain range. Meanwhile, Harvey Colchado was offered to keep him in his position and not retire at the end of the year only if he provided him with valuable information that could compromise the current Attorney General, Juan Carlos Villena, who is not well regarded by the Government.
What Castañeda did not calculate is that during their meetings, in a cebichería and in an Air Force club, Colchado always acted as an undercover agent, recording every detail to later use them as elements of conviction to support his arrest. “It is a disproportionate plot,” said the president’s lawyer, blaming the former Minister of the Interior, Carlos Morán, for having been the one who introduced them. Morán has appeared in some media outlets pointing out that Castañeda’s illicit negotiations had the endorsement of Dina Boluarte.
But who is one of the main women’s bishops who govern Peru? What gray colors your past? Before protecting politicians and acting as a kind of messenger, Mateo Castañeda Segovia, 62, had a career in the Public Ministry, rising through the ranks to become senior prosecutor and supreme deputy prosecutor. In the nineties, when his honorability was not yet in question, he gained prominence when he took on the case of one of the most notorious scams on the continent: that of the Latin American Business Advisory Center (CLAE), under the pyramid or ponzi scheme, charge of a professor named Carlos Manrique, who deceived 250,000 people with the lure of paying high interest.
In the early 2000s, Mateo Castañeda participated in the judicial process of one of the last leaders of the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso: Óscar Ramírez Durand, alias Comrade Feliciano, a son of a general who surrendered to subversion and led his faction in the Huallaga valley. The case inspired one of his books: The crime of terrorism, procedural guarantees in the fight against terrorism. He has also dedicated other volumes to the illegal possession of weapons and the reform of the defunct National Council of the Judiciary, today known as the National Board of Justice, the institution that supervises the judges and prosecutors of Peru.
At the time, Mateo Castañeda Segovia assumed the leadership of the Prosecutor’s Office specialized in organized crime. Then his career began to take a hit. He was accused of manipulating audios that incriminated officials of Alan García’s second government in the so-called case Business Track. “I have no political affiliation,” he defended himself against accusations of his aprismo, the doctrine followed by García.
Before defending Dina Boluarte, Castañeda provided his services to more than one powerful person, in his darkest days. He managed to get the former mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda Lossio, indicted for an irregular payment of 35 million soles (9.4 million dollars) to a shell company, to be excluded from the process. In 2008 he withdrew the accusations and the request for six years in prison against Santiago Fujimori, younger brother of former President Alberto Fujimori, involved in an irregular purchase of the presidential plane, which led to his acquittal. On the other hand, at the end of 2020 he obtained the house arrest of congressman José Luna Gálvez, founder of the political group Podemos Perú, accused of being a member of a criminal organization.
Mateo Castañeda has returned to court, but now as an investigation. He is sitting in the dock. Despite the restrictions that his preliminary detention should have, his law firm has released three letters written by him in his own handwriting. In the first he denies being an advisor, counselor or government official, much less a member of a mafia; In the second he accuses former Minister Carlos Morán and Colonel Harvey Colchado of trying to overthrow the president; and in the third he complains about being investigated by the police division that he supposedly helped dismantle.
“He makes an offer so that, based on the behavior of obstruction and manipulation, they be promoted to general. The only one who appoints a general is not the Minister of the Interior, nor the director of the Police, but the President of the Republic, so obviously here there is a very specific direction in what the exercise of the power delegated to this lawyer means. , the defense of Harvey Colchado has indicated. One day after her arrest, Dina Boluarte went undercover to Mateo Castañeda’s offices. Upon noticing the police presence, who at that moment was in full progress, she turned around and left. A fact that further obscures the case.
This Friday, the Judiciary revoked the preliminary detention of Castañeda and ordered his freedom. The decision also applies to the president’s brother, Nicanor Boluarte, as well as the rest of those involved. The judge has determined that the risk of flight and obstruction was not duly substantiated. Of course, the investigations will continue. During the hearing, Mateo Castañeda, the lawyer for the powerful, broke down while demanding justice.
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