Tuesday 19 December 2017

Latin America’s biggest scandal threatens to snare Peru’s president, too

SINCE narrowly winning Peru’s presidential election in June 2016, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has had it tough. His centre-right Peruvians for Change party holds only 18 of the unicameral congress’s 130 seats. Popular Force, led by his defeated opponent, Keiko Fujimori, boasts 71. It has censured the president’s ministers and thwarted his legislative plans, such as an effort to reform Peru’s corrupt and inefficient judiciary. It was just waiting for an excuse to go after Mr Kuczynski himself.

One presented itself on December 13th, when evidence emerged detailing payments of $780,000 between 2004 and 2007 to Westfield Capital, a Florida-registered firm Mr Kuczynski founded in the 1990s, made by Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction giant which had bribed its way to government contracts across Latin America. He had repeatedly denied any ties to Odebrecht, including to a congressional committee. So on December 15th congress summarily voted by 93 to 17 to launch impeachment proceedings...Continue reading

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