Peruvian president-elect Ollanta Humala on Friday suspended his brother from his political coalition after he flew to Russia to meet with Gazprom executives about investing in the Andean country’s gas fields.
Peruvian newspapers say Tuesday’s meeting reeked of nepotism after communiques by Gazprom and Russia’s foreign ministry said Alexis Humala was sent as a “special representative” of the president-elect. News of the meeting, which surfaced on Thursday, quickly became the leader’s first ethics crisis since winning election.
However, the president-elect, who campaigned as an anti--corruption crusader, said his brother went to Moscow without his knowledge to angle for business with the world’s largest natural gas company, state-controlled Gazprom.
Alexis Humala attended a university in Russia and lived there for many years.
Ollanta Humala takes office on July 28 and has been a harsh critic of the model for Peru’s gas sector, saying exports of the fuel put the country’s energy security at risk.
Columnists had urged the -president-elect to expel his brother from the Nationalist Party they founded together years ago and their Gana Peru coalition of parties put together for last month’s election. Alexis Humala had been a director of both. Critics also urged the -president-elect to ban his brother from holding any government posts.
“I hope Ollanta Humala does the right thing and removes his brother from the party. If not, his anti-corruption discourse will be nothing more than a farce,” said Augusto Alvarez Rodrich, a columnist for the progressive newspaper La Republica, which supported Humala’s candidacy.
Humala’s press office said his brother was suspended from Gana Peru pending an internal investigation and that Humala’s camp has told Russia’s ambassador in Lima that Alexis Humala has no official role representing the president-elect.
Once in office, one of Humala’s early tasks will be renegotiating higher royalties on gas exports made by the Camisea natural gas consortium.
Argentina’s Pluspetrol leads the consortium, which also includes Spain’s Repsol, US-based Hunt Oil and South Korea’s SK Energy.
Humala is a leftist who has promised to govern as a moderate.
He has vowed to respect contracts held by companies and avoid unilaterally changing rules for the private sector.
The departing government of Peruvian President Alan Garcia started renegotiating terms on export royalties in July last year to mitigate a price distortion that has angered consumers because exported gas costs less than gas bought on the domestic market.
However, the negotiations bogged down and Humala’s government will have to resume them in Peru’s small but growing sector, which is potentially worth billions of dollars.
Gazprom does not have operations in Peru, but in recent years has made inroads into Venezuela, Bolivia and, to some extent, Brazil and Argentina.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing