Photo: TWITTER / @ VLADIMIR_CERRON / copyright
An investigation that arose in 2019 in the Junín region, in central Peru, threatens to be the first major judicial headache for the new government of Pedro Castillo.
Last Friday, prosecutor Richard Rojas expanded the investigation for money laundering and included the current prime minister, Guido Bellido , and Vladimir Cerrón , the leader of the Peru Libre party , to determine the origin of the money that financed the campaign that led Castillo to the presidency.
The money laundering case was initiated as a result of the case “Los Dinámicos del Centro”, an investigation that began in 2019 in Junín to identify an alleged organization entrenched in the Regional Directorate of Transport and Communications (DRTC) of the regional government that would have been financed through the issuance of licenses for co nduct.
Cerrón, who was governor of Junín de 2011 to 2014, replied on his Twitter account that “the legal media lynching ” did not It will bend neither him nor his party:
“Peru Libre forged us in steel, we will never renounce our principles, we will put our chest on the bullet, our identification with the people is loyal and surrender is prohibited. ”
One more for the chase… https://t.co/ 84 rnhoryAQ
– Vladimir Cerrón (@VLADIMIR_CERRON) August 08, 2021
“National perspective”
The Constitutional lawyer Luciano López explained to BBC Mundo how the evidence obtained in the investigations in Junín generated a new cause of money laundering at the national level.
“In Peru we have a circuit, at the fiscal and judicial level, which is the corruption of officials, but as the first investigations yielded reasonable evidence that these criminal acts generated funds for proselytizing activities, this money laundering investigation was opened. ”
“This has made an issue that at first glance sounds like something local transcends a national perspective, because it means that funds came from there that could have raised a party to the presidency of the Republic,” he added.
The 30 June 2021, 10 days after the second round election in which Castillo defeated Keiko Fujimori , Huancayo provincial prosecutor Bonnie Bautista, included Cerrón in the investigation on “The Dynamics of the Center”.
Bautista attributes to the leader of the ruling party having had knowledge of this corruption network and having covered it up in order to finance his political activities .
For his part, the Red prosecutor s, in charge of the money laundering cause, considers that, in addition to financing the electoral campaigns, this money was used to face compensation of the conviction for corruption that Cerrón has in force and that prevented him from being a candidate for electoral positions by his party.
Rojas also included more people in the investigation – such as Prime Minister Bellido and Waldemar Cerrón , Vladimir’s brother, congressman and spokesman for Peru Libre- and the ruling party as a legal entity.
“I think a flank is opening quite serious that it can shake the foundations of the government itself that has just been installed, ”said the constitutional lawyer López.
From Junín to Lima
In addition, in the In recent days, the national superior prosecutor of the anticorruption system, Omar Tello, ordered that this case in which e Vladimir Cerrón is being investigated, he is transferred to Lima, despite the fact that it had initially been decided that he should remain in Junín.
Tello said that at first the possibility of transferring the case to the capital was denied because the argument was not properly supported of the “national repercussion”.
Faced with this first decision, the anti-corruption attorney, Javier Pacheco, had warned that the investigation would have repercussions, since “the party is compromised Peru Libre politician and the presidential campaign 2020 – 2020 questioned the financing of the political party to which our highest national authority belongs ”.
These judicial decisions, attributed by Vladimir Cerrón to a political persecution, come when President Castillo’s Council of Ministers is still pending to go to Parliament to request the investiture vote.
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