RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday (30) requested the revocation of the suspension of a 4-year prison order (without entering jail) and the imprisonment of the secretary-general of the ruling Peru Libre party, Vladimir Cerrón, reported the Peruvian Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Cerrón, a doctor who founded and led the party that includes the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, is currently serving a sentence for the commission of crimes against public administration, in the modality of incompatible negotiation, when he was governor of the central Andean region of Junín, between 2011 and 2014.
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The Public Prosecutor’s Office added, in a statement, that the request was filed by prosecutor Bonnie Bautista before the Fifth Court of Investigation Specialized in Crimes of Corruption of Officials of Huancayo, the capital of Junín.
“According to the request of the prosecutor’s office, there would be a flagrant breach of the rules of conduct set against the defendants, in relation to the payment of the amount for civil reparation,” she detailed about Cerrón and three others convicted in this case.
Bautista also requested an “extension of the preparatory investigation” against Cerrón for the alleged commission of a crime as part of a criminal organization in another case known as “Los dinámicos del Centro.”
The prosecutor’s request “is based on the fact that there are revealing indications,” such as cell phone conversations, corroboration acts with an aspiring collaborator and information provided by other aspiring collaborators, “that would lead to the presumption” that Cerrón “would be a member” of that criminal organization.
These versions, she said, “allow to presume” that the former governor knew of license traffic in the Regional Direction of Transport and Communications of Junin and the hiring of personnel “with affinity to the political party he leads.”
In this sense, the prosecutor’s request established an investigation term of 36 months and ordered the taking of Cerrón’s statement for August 26 or next August 31, according to official information.
The request was made after prosecutor Nora Flores asked the Prosecutor’s Office to include Cerrón in the investigation on July 7, considering that there is evidence that he had participated in the alleged illicit acts and operated through leaders of Peru Libre who are being investigated.
For her part, the prosecutor affirms that “Los dinámicos del Centro” would only be “the tip of the iceberg” of a “much bigger case” since she has more than 200,000 recordings that will be analyzed during the investigation.
This case became public last June 15, when the police arrested 27 workers and officials of the Regional Government of Junin, several of them militants of Peru Libre, after which several of those involved agreed to cooperate with the justice system.
However, last July 14, the Fifth Preparatory Investigation Court of Huancayo considered that there were not enough elements to accept a prosecutor’s request to order preventive detention for those investigated, who now face the case with orders to appear with restrictions.
PERU’S RASPUTIN
Vladimir Cerrón, the Marxist founder and controversial leader of the Peru Libre party, is seen by analysts and the right-wing Peruvian press as a kind of black monk, a cunning Rasputin behind the new leftist president.
He has said time and again that Pedro Castillo must subordinate himself to the ideological framework of the Peru Libre party. Castillo’s first decisions indicate that is exactly what is happening.
Many in Peru believe that Pedro Castillo is just a puppet of the former governor of Junín, that the latter has shaped Castillo’s candidacy according to his own ideas, handing him a crisis-ridden country on a silver platter ready to implement his dangerous ideology.
The disastrous reaction of the stock and financial markets on Friday responds to the announcements made by Castillo in his first speech to the Nation, Wednesday, and to the appointment of the radical leftist legislator Guido Bellido as president of the Council of Ministers.