From Lima
This Tuesday the judicial hearing will be held in which the request of the Prosecutor’s Office for a second preventive detention against Pedro Castillo. The former president has been in jail since December 7, with an 18-month preventive prison, accused of rebellion after his failed attempt to close Congress. On this occasion, The Prosecutor’s Office requests three years of preventive detention on corruption charges. He is accused of leading a criminal organization to direct public tenders. The Prosecutor’s Office charges him with the crimes of criminal organization, influence peddling and collusion. Prosecutor Uriel Terán has indicated that for these charges the former president could be sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.
in dialogue with PageI1, Castillo’s lawyer In this process for corruption, Eduardo Pachas, accused the government of Dina Boluarte of being behind this new request for preventive detention against Castillo. “This is not a legal issue, it is a political issue. There is an order from the dictatorship to keep President Castillo in prison,” he said. The former president has sued before international bodies to annul his current detention for rebellion arguing that due process has not been respected for his removal from the presidency and his imprisonment. The head of the ministerial cabinet, Alberto Otárola, publicly demanded that Congress and the Prosecutor’s Office “accelerate” the accusation for corruption to dictate a preventive detention that keeps Castillo in prison in case international justice agrees with him in questioning the legality of his current imprisonment. Days after that open interference by the Executive in the judicial process for corruption against Castillo, Congress approved the accusation for corruption lifting the jurisdiction and the Prosecutor’s Office requested preventive detention.
The Prosecutor’s Office assures that Castillo organized from power the delivery of tenders in exchange for the payment of bribes. He points out that he operated together with his family and political environment. His wife, Lilia Paredes, now an asylum seeker in Mexicohis three brothers-in-law and his nephews are included in the tax accusation. Castillo’s younger sister-in-law, Yenifer Paredes, whom the former president calls “my daughter,” was in pretrial detention between August and October of last year. Still processed. Its Ministers of Transportation Juan Silva and of Housing Geiner Alvarado have been denounced. For them, three years of preventive detention are also requested. Silva has been a fugitive since July of last year.
three cases
There are three cases for which Castillo is accused. One is due to a decree from his government to carry out more than one hundred water and sanitation works in towns in poverty, for a total of 130 million dollars. It is pointed out that in some of these works there was corruption. The tenders for these works, however, were in charge of the municipalities and not the Executive. The Prosecutor’s Office presents as main evidence the testimony of the businessman Hugo Espino, who says he paid a bribe of 228,000 soles (about 60,000 dollars) to the mayor of the rural town of Anguía -where Castillo lived until he became president- for a work of 3 million soles (790 thousand dollars), and that he coordinated this deal with Castillo’s wife and sister-in-law, who worked for his company. Due to this statement, Espino’s preventive detention was lifted. The prosecutor’s accusation states that Castillo is a friend of the mayor of Anguía, José Medina, who is in custody.
A second case is based on the statement of the lobbyist accused of corruption Karelim López that the construction consortium to which she was related obtained the bid to build a bridge for an amount of 58 million dollars after paying a bribe to Castillo. That contract was annulled after this complaint. López negotiates judicial benefits in exchange for her testimony against Castillo.
The third accusation is for the purchase of fuel for 74 million dollars by the state oil company Petro Perú from the company Heaven Petroleum Operation (HPO). A collaborator of the prosecutor’s office assures that Castillo received a bribe of two million soles (523 thousand dollars) from the owner of HBO, Samir Abudayeh, so that his company wins that tender. When the complaint broke out, that tender was canceled. A new one was called and HPO won it again.
“The Prosecutor’s Office cites testimonies that have not been corroborated, there is no evidence,” Castillo’s lawyer told this newspaper. Regarding the decree of the Executive and the municipal works, he replied: “If any work was not carried out, let it be investigated, but to say that by issuing a decree to make it easier for municipalities to carry out works there is a criminal organization is absurd. At the time, that decree was not observed by Congress. The businessman Hugo Espino never mentions President Castillo when he talks about an alleged bribe. He accuses his sister-in-law, his brother-in-law, they have already responded, but it is not linked to Castillo ”.
In the case of the accusation for the construction of a bridge, the lawyer indicated that although this work was delivered in the Castillo government, the bidding process began in the Francisco Sagasti government and that government appointed the officials who decided on this issue. “The Prosecutor’s Office says that Castillo appointed officials to direct tenders, but he did not name the officials who managed that tender.”
Regarding the purchase of fuel, Pachas admitted that Castillo met with the beneficiary businessman, but pointed out that they did not talk about that subject but about an oil palm project. “He received him as he received many, they are not friends.” He focuses his defense on the fact that there is no evidence of the route of the two million that the Prosecutor’s Office says was paid as a bribe. “The businessman Abudayeh had to have withdrawn those two million soles from a bank account, or from his company, but there is no information about the exit of that money. Nor is there a single piece of evidence that Castillo received that amount.”
Pachas questions that a second preventive detention is requested when there is already one in force. “If Castillo is already in prison, what is the procedural danger, there is no danger of flight. I don’t know of a precedent for someone to have two preventive prisons simultaneously.