On Monday, at dawn, a small army of policemen raided homes and offices, private and official, and detained three advisors to the Attorney General, Patricia Benavides. The main one, Jaime Castillo, who could collaborate with the Prosecutor’s Office by accusing her.
According to reports, six months of secret investigation by the Team of Prosecutors Against Corruption in Power (Efccp) and the police unit under its command, reinforced by an elite anti-corruption unit and an anti-narcotics intelligence group, culminated.
The Efccp -paradoxically created by Benavides in July 2022 to investigate the then president Pedro Castillo-, made public part of the evidence obtained against what was described as an alleged criminal organization headed by Benavides, almost at the same time that she dismissed the boss of the team, Marita Barreto.
The network, according to the investigations, was dedicated to influence peddling, by secretly seeking votes from congressmen suitable for the consolidation of Benavides in office, such as the dismissal of his predecessor, the supreme prosecutor Zoraida Ávalos, and the appointment of the new defender of the People, Josué Gutiérrez.
A far-right newspaper maintained that the operation last Monday was a maneuver by the Government to neutralize an imminent complaint by Benavides against President Dina Boluarte for the deaths in the repression of large protests against her.
This version is supported by the fact that, the day after the so-called “Operation Valkyrie V”, the prosecutor denounced Boluarte for the aforementioned issue and announced it in a television message in which she described the Efccp offensive as an adversary operation. without support.
The president responded that the complaint was a distracting maneuver that Benavides announced despite the fact that the previous week he extended the investigations prior to a complaint for eight months.
For its part, the National Board of Justice (JNJ), which appoints, evaluates and dismisses judges and prosecutors, opened a summary disciplinary process against the National Prosecutor that will culminate on December 6, possibly with a suspension for six months and the affected person appealed to a judicial remedy to block the procedure.
In the midst of the scandal, the Constitutional Court yesterday announced a complex and ambiguous ruling that discards a request for clarifications to a ruling by the TC that in 2022 reactivated a pardon granted to Fujimori by the neoliberal president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2017, which the Judiciary declared illegal. The new resolution indicated, therefore, that ruling remained in force, which could be interpreted as a green light so that Fujimori, sentenced to 25 years for crimes against humanity, could go free, which unleashed family, media and family pressures to demand the immediate release of the prisoner.
Consequently, the TC ordered Judge Vicente Fernández, who had rejected the habeas corpus origin of the confusing process, with the instruction that he “act in use of his powers”, which the judge declared inadmissible, among other reasons, because according to a recent legal reform, attention to the appeal corresponds to the instance that validates it, that is, the TC.
It was a negative week for the Fujimori, since the Judiciary, yesterday, ordered to begin the trial of Keiko, daughter of the former ruler, for money laundering with electoral funds received secretly, obstruction of justice and forgery, for which the Prosecutor’s Office has requested for her 30 years and 10 months in prison.
ef/lam/mrs
