The prosecutor assures that there is a “criminal organization entrenched in the Government Palace with the purpose of capturing, controlling and directing contracting processes to obtain illicit profits”
The political tension in Peru continues to worsen. The National Prosecutor, Patricia Benavides, filed a complaint with Congress on Tuesday against the country’s president, Pedro Castillo, “as the alleged perpetrator of crimes against public tranquility in the form of a criminal organization aggravated by his status as leader ».
“Serious indications have been found of the alleged existence of a criminal organization entrenched in the Government Palace with the purpose of taking over, controlling and directing contracting processes to obtain illicit profits,” Benavides reported in a message broadcast on social networks.
Castillo’s situation is difficult. He accumulates six investigations against him and since he assumed power fifteen months ago, his Cabinet has lived in a continuous crisis, with multiple resignations of his ministers. In this time he has lived under the siege of the Prosecutor’s Office and the siege of a Congress, dominated by the right, which demands his resignation and tried twice to remove him.
Now he faces an unprecedented complaint in the democratic history of Peru, with the accusation of leading a criminal organization. The left-wing coalition that supports him in Congress barely has a third of the seats, insufficient to stop the investigation (it will go ahead if 66 of the 130 deputies support it). If it is approved to start the investigations, the president would have to leave office, although he will maintain immunity, a figure that does not prevent him from being investigated.
“If I have to give my life, I will do it”
The complaint was filed the same day that the Prosecutor’s Office raided the home of a Castillo’s sister in the morning in search of her nephew, whom they accuse of belonging to the alleged criminal gang led by the president. In the operation, the houses of twelve more investigated in the same cause were also registered.
The thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office is that the leftist president directs a corruption network of money laundering and granting of public works contracts made up of his family and political environment.
The president, a rural teacher like his wife, denies that his family has committed crimes and says he is the victim of a campaign to remove him from power. “The execution of a new form of coup d’état has begun in Peru,” he asserted after hearing the complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office. “Here I am and if my blood has to run down the street for the benefit of this town, I have to do it, and if I have to give my life, I’m going to do it.”
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