Corruption in Peru is costing the Andean country approximately $3.57 billion per year, according to estimates given yesterday by the Comptroller General, Fuad Khoury.
Khoury said that the annual losses caused by corruption are equivalent to about 2 percent of Peru’s gross domestic product.
“Peru is a young country, strong and with energy, but it’s carrying this burden that is called corruption,” Khoury said, according to daily El Comercio. “It is a burden on her back and its holding her back from growing. It is a burden that represents approximately 2 percent of the gross domestic product.”
Of more than 4,000 public officials accused of corruption, only 300 cases have reached a court sentence, and only 90 officials have been found guilty, Khoury said. “That is a sign of impunity.”
Khoury, speaking at the CAAI 2013 International Anticorruption Conference, held in Lima this week, said that main victims of corruption are the almost 10 million Peruvians living in poverty. Speakers at the conference included specialists from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.
High-profile corruption cases are common in Peru, and this week alone provided almost a sampling of corruption cases for the conference. A congressional committee is currently investigating acts of corruption during former President Alan Garcia’s administration —including granting pardons to drug traffickers— while investigations continue into possible corruption by former President Alejandro Toledo, and on several members of Congress —including a new scandal, involving congressman Michael Urtecho, a disabled politican in a wheelchair who has allegedly underpaid congressional aids or charged for non-existent aids and is now being investigated alongside his wife for shady financial management of a wheelchair donation program funded by evangelical churches in the United States, in which less than half the wheelchairs donated were in fact distributed by Urtecho’s association and there is no trace of the others.
Peru is not a young country. In my three years here corruption has gotten worse not better.
An example is my arrival yesterday at the Lima airport. I needed soles and the only ATMs at the airport are Global Net. To get fifty soles I had to pay a fee of S/. 14.50, over five dollars US.
The people that run the airport know how much Global charges and must get a kickback.
For a country that claims to want tourists this is a hell of a way to be greeted. at the international gateway
It tells you the fee , and you have the option to cancel the transaction.
Or, go to the exchange counter, or use a credit card or debt card that refunds the bank fees, such as etrade ATM card.. Or M&T bank for example. I harly card this corruption being charged a fee, that’s clearly given the to the person before they are charged, stop your whining