Monthly Archives: December 2017

LIMA, Peru — Alberto Fujimori, the former hard-right autocrat who led Peru in the 1990s, has offered an ambivalent apology for his administration’s endemic corruption and serious human rights abuses after his abrupt early release from prison. In a Facebook video posted Tuesday, Fujimori, 79, expressed his “profound gratitude” to President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, vowed to support national “reconciliation” and apologized to those he disappointed “with all my heart.” But his words are unlikely to assuage mounting anger over the pardon, which has convulsed Peru and sets up a power struggle within the…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — The Peruvian Congress is threatening to remove President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from office over corruption allegations, using a fast-track impeachment process that critics describe as an assault on democracy. Kuczynski’s opponents produced documents last week showing that Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant at the heart of Latin America’s largest corruption scandal, made payments of nearly $800,000 to his investment banking firm, Westfield Capital. Some of the payments occurred during his previous stints as economy minister and prime minister, while Odebrecht was winning major public contracts. The center-right economist, a former U.S. citizen…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — It is 8 a.m. and the line of Venezuelan refugees outside the Interpol office already stretches to the end of the block. Most have just arrived in Lima with not much more than the clothes on their back and are here applying for a certificate to show they have no criminal record, a requirement for a work permit in Peru. “Leaving was tough, but staying would have been tougher,” said Andrea Sequiera, 29, as she waits at the back of the line with her husband Luis, 31, and 8-year-old son Fabian. ”We know…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — Pedro Pablo Kuczynski won Peru's presidential election last year thanks to his image as an honest technocrat who would fight corruption and uphold rule of law. Part of that appeal was based on his campaign pledge not to pardon his jailed predecessor Alberto Fujimori, the 1990s hard-right strongman who oversaw rampant graft, death squads and vote-rigging. Now, just 16 months into his five-year term, Kuczynski is talking up the possibility of freeing Fujimori, who is nine years into a 25-year sentence, on the grounds that he does not want the 79-year-old former autocrat…Read more …