Peru’s Keiko Fujimori faces trial on corruption charges

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A court on Tuesday will hold the first hearing in the long-awaited trial of former presidential candidate and leader of Peru’s right-wing opposition, Keiko Fujimori, who faces a 30-year prison sentence if convicted of money laundering and other corruption charges.

The eldest daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who is jailed for crimes against humanity, is returning to the judicial spotlight nearly three months after the election. She narrowly lost the presidency, which would have given her immunity to avoid prosecution and postponed her five-year term.

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On March 11, prosecutor José Domingo Pérez asked the judiciary to sentence the populist leader to 30 years and 10 months in prison over the corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which also implicated four former Peruvian presidents. She denies the charges.

Tuesday’s hearing is a preliminary step in the criminal trial and will be presided over by Judge Victor Zuñiga.

Keiko Fujimori will not be present at the hearing, but her lawyer, a close source, told AFP. The defendants are not required to attend this intermediate phase of the trial, the last phase before the trial.

In this phase, which can last days or weeks, the judge reviews the prosecution’s case and must decide whether to accept the charges in whole or in part.

The judge is the same one who remanded her into custody in January 2020, from which she was released three months later because of the pandemic. Last June, however, he refused to send her to prison based on the request of a new prosecutor.

Since May 2020, Keiko Fujimori has been under probation, which prohibits her from leaving Lima or traveling abroad without judicial permission or from meeting or speaking with witnesses in the case.

Prosecutors accuse Fujimori, 46, of money laundering, organized crime, obstruction of justice, and making false statements in an administrative proceeding.

Prosecutor Perez had requested last year that the Fuerza Popular be banned as a political party, saying it was a “criminal organization.” The judiciary rejected his request on December 28, 2020, allowing it to run candidates in the April general election and win 24 of 130 seats in Congress.

Fujimorismo is now the second strongest force in the fractured Congress, behind the ruling leftist Peru Libre party (37). But its party controled parliament until 2019, having won 73 seats in the 2016 elections.

Fujimori lost the presidency – for the third time – in the hard-fought June 6 runoff to leftist agriculture teacher Pedro Castillo, who took her traditional electoral strongholds in the impoverished Andean highlands.