Former Peruvian congressman Kenji Fujimori sentenced to over 4 years in prison

On Tuesday, November 15, the Peruvian Judiciary sentenced former congressman Kenji Fujimori to four years and six months in prison for the crime of influence peddling.

The court considered him guilty of having tried to illicitly negotiate votes to avoid the impeachment of former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) in 2017.

The measure of the Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court presided over by Judge Inés Villa Bonilla, also reaches former legislators Guillermo Bocángel and Bienvenido Ramírez, accused of the same crime in the framework of the case known as “Mamanivideos”.

The sentence imposed against the son of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and the others will be calculated once it becomes final, from the moment it is ratified in the second instance.

They must also pay a 400-day fine of PEN 52,000 (US$13,422).

In the case of former advisor Alexis Toledo, he must serve four years of suspended imprisonment and pay 365 days of fine, amounting to PEN 30,112, according to the judicial resolution.

Likewise, all those sentenced, who once formed a parliamentary group after being expelled from the pro-Fujimori party Fuerza Popular, have been politically disqualified for 18 months.

The Peruvian Justice has sentenced them to four and a half years in prison and not 12 years, as initially requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, after acquitting them of the crime of bribery (bribery) and after evaluating that they do not have a criminal record.

The “Mamanivideos” case, which led to the resignation of former president Kuczynski in 2018, included videos and audios of alleged negotiations that took place in 2017 to prevent Congress from declaring the vacancy of the then president for his alleged links to Odebrecht.

After this material came to light, recorded with a hidden camera by the now deceased former pro-Fujimori legislator Moisés Mamani, Kenji Fujimori and the then congressmen Ramírez and Bocángel were suspended from their legislative activities.

Kenji, brother of opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, expressed last week when presenting his final plea that he felt “totally disappointed” for the damage and pain caused by his time in politics.

At that time, he assured that “there was never any offer of works” to get votes to reject the impeachment of Kuczynski, whose government approved a pardon in favor of Alberto Fujimori in December 2017, which was annulled months later by the Judiciary.

In this sense, Alberto Fujimori’s youngest son ruled out that there was a negotiation of the pardon in favor of his father, who has been sentenced to 25 years in prison since 2009 for crimes against humanity.

Xinhua