Peruvian prosecutor seeks 15-year prison for graft-tainted ex-president
Lima, Dec 16 (EFE).- Former Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra faces 15 years in prison for alleged corruption while he served as governor of the southern state of Moquegua from 2011 to 2014.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested 15 years of imprisonment for Vizcarra, who was the president from 2018 to 2020, the Public Ministry tweeted.
The ministry said the accusation includes Vizcarra receiving millions of dollars in 2014 from a construction consortium in exchange for a contract to execute the Lomas de Ilo irrigation project.
He also took alleged bribes for the expansion and improvement of Moquegua Hospital.
The kickbacks would have been paid when Vizcarra was Moquegua region’s governor, a position that he resigned to become the vice presidential candidate of neoliberal businessman and politician Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
The Prosecutor’s Office has requested Vizcarra be disqualified from holding public office for nine years.
In 2020, prosecutor Germán Juárez requested to question Vizcarra.
The companies that won the tenders are also under the scanner for their involvement in the “construction club,” a group of firms that shared public works in exchange for million-dollar bribes.
The development comes as Peru has plunged into a deep political crisis due to protests against the ouster and imprisonment of elected leftist head of state Pedro Castillo.
The new president, Dina Boluarte, said in a commencement address at a military academy on Friday that she had proposed a dialogue to end the unrest that has claimed 22 lives, half of them since the imposition of a nationwide state of emergency.
Boluarte spoke a day after eight people died when soldiers opened fire on protesters trying to occupy the airport in Ayacucho, an incident captured on video.
Two members of her cabinet resigned Friday over the security forces’ “disproportionate” response to the protests. EFE
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