Peruvian President Alan Garcia was mulling a Cabinet shake-up late on Thursday after all of his ministers offered to resign in a widening corruption scandal over oil concessions.
The president has faced calls from opposition leaders to shuffle his Cabinet since audio tapes emerged this week linking members of his APRA party to a plan to steer lucrative petroleum contracts to favored bidders in exchange for bribes.
Garcia, a staunch supporter of free-markets and foreign investment, has yet to say which ministers he will let go or keep.
The Cabinet members voluntarily offered up their positions with “an absolutely clean and calm conscience,” Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo said on Thursday after the ministers arrived together at the government palace. “We have offered our posts to the president and under no circumstances will we get in the way of the country’s growth.”
Del Castillo, Garcia’s right-hand man, was mentioned in the taped conversations as someone who would provide favors in a plan to rig auctions of oil and gas concessions. Del Castillo also had lengthy meetings with APRA party members who were working as lobbyists and involved in the auctions, but he has denied wrongdoing.
The former mines and energy minister, Juan Valdivia, already has been forced to quit, along with two other energy officials.
Finance Minister Luis Valdivieso, a former IMF official who recently joined Garcia’s administration, is expected to stay on.
Peru’s Congress has voted to investigate all oil and gas concessions granted since 2006 and will scrutinize dozens of contracts signed between Peru and foreign oil companies for signs of irregularities in the country’s growing petroleum sector.
Garcia is a former leftist whose first term as president in the 1980s ended in economic disaster. He has since become a champion of mainstream economic policies and was elected to lead Peru for a second time in 2006.
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