A prosecutor in Peru is seeking up to 18 months in jail for former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala and his wife to keep them from fleeing the country while money laundering charges are prepared against them, according to a request made public on Tuesday.
Prosecutor German Juarez, in the attorney general’s office, said in a written request he had evidence that would prove in court that the couple took illegally obtained money from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht SA and then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez that was used to bankroll Humala’s campaigns and for personal gain.
Humala denied any wrongdoing and called the prosecutor’s request “surprising and abusive.”
“We’re complying with all of the prosecutor’s orders. We’ve been collaborating with the investigation because we have the biggest stake in this being cleared up,” Humala told reporters outside his home in Lima, where he spoke beside his wife and the cofounder of his political party, Nadine Heredia.
A hearing was scheduled for yesterday and if Judge Richard Concepcion approves Juarez’s request, Humala would become the second former Peruvian leader sought for arrest since Odebrecht last year acknowledged publicly that it bribed officials across Latin America over a decade-long period.
Concepcion in February ordered former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo to be jailed for up to 18 months before a trial over allegations that he took US$20 million in bribes from Odebrecht.
Toledo, believed to be in the US, denies wrongdoing and has refused to turn himself in.
In Peru, the Odebrecht scandal has so far mostly tarnished the reputations of Humala and Toledo, prompting their critics to portray them as hypocrites for railing against graft in the government of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori is serving a 25-year prison sentence for convictions that include human rights violations and corruption.
Juarez said two of Odebrecht’s former executives have testified that they arranged to send US$3 million for Humala’s 2011 campaign on orders from the Workers Party of Brazil.
The money was the product of corruption, Juarez said.
Juarez also alleged that Humala’s 2006 campaign was financed with money that Chavez stole from Venezuela’s treasury.
Humala won the 2011 election after casting himself in the style of former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS