In a country like Peru, where the majority of leaders have the fateful fate of ending up behind bars, at the time Pedro Pablo Kuczynski tried to use his work history as a guarantee of his honor. “They have destroyed the reputation of a man who has worked for 60 years (…) This really makes me cry in my heart,” he said in April 2019 at a hearing where a request for 36 months of preventive detention was about to be issued against him. The economist had resigned a year ago from the Presidency of the Republic, but had been under investigation since 2017 for the alleged crime of money laundering to the detriment of the State. According to the tax thesis, PPK, as it is colloquially known, favored the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and its associated companies with the concession of various works in exchange for million-dollar bribes that it collected through consulting and advisory services, when he was Minister of Economy and Finance during the mandate of Alejandro Toledo between 2001 and 2006.
Finally, PPK was placed under house arrest, a measure that he complied with until July 2022, when the judiciary modified it by appearance with restrictions. In all these years, as the case progressed, PPK made headlines for his state of health. In 2019, a pacemaker was placed for heart failure. The following year he was transferred to a clinic for chronic sinusitis and in 2022 he was admitted for pneumonia. At the time, his daughter, Alexandra Kuczynski, implored the Peruvian justice for humanity, alleging that a sick man, over 80 years old, could not flee. “He won’t be able to survive a prison. It would be a death sentence,” she noted.
This Friday the Prosecutor’s Office of the Special Team in the Lava Jato case in Peru has requested a 35-year prison sentence for the former leader of the political group Peruanos Por el Kambio for money laundering with the aggravating circumstance of having formed an alleged criminal organization that would have received more than 12 million dollars from Odebrecht. The Chilean businessman and PPK partner Gerardo Sepúlveda has also been included in the tax accusation, for whom 35 years is also requested. For PPK’s secretary and right-hand man, Gloria Kisic, 23 years has been requested while for her driver José Luis Bernaola, 11 years and six months.
Julio Midolo, lawyer for the economist who governed Peru between 2016 and the first quarter of 2018, stated that his client has taken the news calmly and that he is sure that he will come out well. “Mr. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is aware of the information. He is quite calm and trusts that at the end of all this we will prove his total innocence. The line of defense is the same that we have proposed from the beginning (…) They do not have any evidence that determines money laundering”, indicated Midolo.
Jorge Barata, former director of Odebrecht, claimed to have contributed money to PPK’s presidential campaign in 2011. A fact that the former president has repeatedly denied. On the other hand, in 2021 he was constitutionally denounced for having pardoned former President Alberto Fujimori in 2017, but the case was filed. The last thing that was known about PPK was last February, when he gave his opinion about the protests faced by the current government. “All this chaos has destroyed most of the political parties in Peru (…) there must be an explanation for us to appear as a civilized country, not a country of massacres,” he said again without losing honor.
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