Gov’t backtracks, restores license for Radio La Voz

Peru’s Transportation and Communications Ministry has restored the broadcasting license for Radio La Voz de Bagua following meetings with national press freedom groups, newspaper La Republica reported.

The decision to restore the license was made following meetings with Press and Society Institute (IPYS), Peruvian Press Council, the National Association of Peruvian Journalists and national ombudsdman – the Defensoria del Pueblo.

“My first impressions are of infinite thanks to all of the groups and everyone who helped achieve this win,” the director of Radio La Voz, Carlos Flores, told Ideeleradio. Read more…

Peru Gov’t won’t back away from canceling Radio La Voz’s license following Bagua protest broadcasts

Peru’s Transportation and Communications Ministry (MTC) will not rescind a resolution that canceled Radio La Voz’s broadcast license last year, the director of the radio station, Carlos Flores, told CNR news service.

MTC revoked Radio La Voz de Bagua’s broadcast license on June 8, 2009, three days after anti-government protests erupted on a remote jungle highway in the Bagua province of Amazonas department.

Leading members of President Alan García’s APRA party accused the station of inciting violence during the unrest. The official revocation order, however, made no reference to any alleged support of or incitement to violence, and justified the action on the grounds that the station had failed to meet the legal requirements set forth in its initial broadcasting permit from March 2007.

The deadly confrontation between protesters and Peruvian soldiers and police was the worst crisis since García took office in 2006. Read more…

Peruvian Times complaint to Agencia Andina

UPDATE to original post: Agencia Andina has added links on its posts back to our original stories. Peruvian Times appreciates the corrective action.

Lima, March 31, 2010

Laura Vásquez
English Website Editor
Andina Agencia Peruana de Noticias

Dear Ms. Vásquez,

Once again Agencia Andina’s English Website has blatantly plagiarized a Peruvian Times article for use on its English language news page. Read more…

Peru government to review medical records cited in pardon of ex-TV mogul

Justice Minister Aurelio Pastor said Wednesday a full review will be made of the medical reports used to justify the pardon granted last December to former TV owner José Enrique Crousillat, who took millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for favorable coverage of the Fujimori regime in the 1990s.

“We are going to ask for a new assessment of the medical tests,” state-run news agency Andina quoted Pastor as saying. “We have asked for the support of the Ministry of Health to recommend experts that, based on the reports in the file, will provide additional information to the executive branch and the president.”

President Alan García granted a pardon to the former owner of America Television on Dec. 11 for “humanitarian reasons,” on the grounds that Crousillat, 77, suffers from a series of ailments, including heart disease, depression and diabetes, which could put his life at risk.

Crousillat and his son, José Francisco, fled to Argentina in 2001 when video tapes recorded in the National Intelligence Service, SIN, proved the wide corruption network that ex-President Fujimori and his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos had woven to control the media and public opinion. Early in 2006, the Crousillats were extradited to face trial in Lima.

Crousillat was sentenced to eight years in prison and charged a fine of $52 million, convicted of “selling” America Television’s editorial line to the Fujimori government in the 1990s. Two videotapes, recorded in the SIN offices in 1999, show Crousillat and his son receiving bundles of dollar bills from Vladimiro Montesinos. In one recording, on Feb. 26 that year, Montesinos counted the $100,000 packets to make up $1 million, “for January and February.” Crousillat and his son received about $619,000 a month to broadcast the news as dictated by Montesinos.

About a month after he was pardoned by President García, however, IDL-Reporteros, a non-profit investigative reporting team, published a picture of Crousillat, who appeared to be in good health during a recent visit to a beach. Crousillat had also been seen in good condition at popular restaurants.

Furthermore, Crousillat filled a lawsuit last Monday against the current directors of America Television in an attempt to regain control of the station, Crousillat’s lawyer, Jorge Castro, told Radio Programas Peru. Castro said former president Alejandro Toledo is also included in the lawsuit. He accuses them of, among other things, collusion and fraud.

“One begins to feel that he has been deceived, because a person that is in the final stages of their health is not at the beach… or at the Costanera restaurant,” President García told daily El Comercio.

Critics of García, however,  question his sincerity and point to his relationship with Crousillat’s daughter, Marisol, who was named to a top position at the government-owned National Institute of Radio and Television of Peru, or IRTP, in July 2009. Marisol Crousillat was appointed to the position by then-president of the IRTP, Ricardo Ghibellini, a confidant of García who was named ambassador to Brazil by the president in February.

“For me it is a mistake to suggest that this is a product of a deceived president. Those who believe that do not know our president,” former anti-corruption prosecutor, Antonio Maldonado, told Ideele Radio. “I don’t think that our president is so naive as to be tricked. This is part of a much more complicated sketch.”

“We have to be clear. The pardon given to José Enrique Crousillat is the largest betrayal of the fight against corruption in recent times. The pardon should be revised, it should be part of a national and international campaign for its revision. It should be annulled.”

Economics Prof. John McMillan and Pablo Zoido, a Ph.D. student in Political Economics, from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, published a paper in 2004 demonstrating the priority that Montesinos placed on Peru’s media in his campaign to control the nation’s democracy. The study, titled “How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru” detailed how television owners were paid bribes about 100 times larger than what judges or politicians received.  Control of the Fourth Estate was the key to successfully gutting the democratic system of checks and balances.

Peruvian historian Antonio Zapata leaves successful TV history series to return to academia

By Paul Goulder
After nine years directing a history series for national television, historian Antonio Zapata has decided it is time to go back to university to teach and do research full time.

Sucedió en el Perú has been broadcast on the national television channel, Canal 7, since 2001 and has dealt with a wide range of historical topics (are there any left to cover?). Read more…

Peru journalist critical of government jailed for defamation

The founding director of a weekly magazine in Bagua, in Peru’s Amazonas department, was sentenced to a year in prison on Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit dating back to 2005.

Journalist Alejandro Carrascal of Nor Oriente magazine said he was unaware of the lawsuit filed against him by the former director of Bagua’s Superior Institute of Technology, Víctor Feria, when he was arrested on Monday, daily La República reported. For his part, Feria told the Coordinadora Nacional del Radio, or CNR, that he was surprised by the sentence delivered by Judge Francisco Miranda, saying he had essentially abandoned the lawsuit more than a year ago. Read more…

Peru D.A. to open investigation into prison pardon granted to ex-TV owner

The district attorney in charge of corruption crimes is to open a preliminary investigation into the pardon granted earlier this month by President Garcia to former TV mogul José Enrique Crousillat.

The investigation is being made into possible irregularities in the request for the pardon. The former majority shareholder of America Television was sentenced last year to eight years in prison but has been held in a private clinic for the past 10 months on grounds of to ill health. Read more…

Best social networking site for Peru’s expat community gets FB-like facelift

By Rick Vecchio
~ Peruvian Times Editor ~
Peruvian Times’ sister site Expatperu.com has undergone a major redesign with a fabulous social networking application for Peru’s English-speaking international community, or anyone interested in getting an inside view of how things really work in South America’s third largest nation. Read more…

Human Rights Watch: Peru radio closure could undermine press freedom

The Peruvian government’s decision this month to revoke the broadcast license of a local radio station “could have a chilling effect on community broadcasting in Peru,” reported Human Rights Watch on Wednesday.

“The timing and circumstances of the revocation suggest that it may have been an act of censorship, or punishment, in response to coverage of anti-government protests on June 5, 2009,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

Before dawn on June 5, 2009, violence erupted on a remote jungle highway in the Bagua province of Amazonas department, after army helicopters, soldiers strategically positioned atop hills, and police began to throw tear gas grenades directly into the crowd of 5,000 protesters. The tear gas caused panic and angered the protesters, who responded with violence. Police accused protesters of firing first, but the tribesmen denied having guns and said they only carried their traditional spears.

In the worst crisis since President Alan García took office in 2006, the violent confrontation left six natives, four Bagua residents and 11 police dead, as well as one officer missing and hundreds of people injured.

Then, days later, on June 8, 2009, the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications revoked Radio La Voz de Bagua’s broadcast license.

But, although Peru’s Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas and other leading APRA party members said that the station had supported violence during its coverage of the civil unrest in Bagua, the official revocation order makes no reference to any alleged support of or incitement to violence, and justifies the action on the grounds that the station had failed to meet the legal requirements set forth in its initial broadcasting permit from March 2007.

“It’s one thing to express solidarity and other to call for violence,” said Ronald Gamarra, the Secretary General of Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator, or CNNDH.

“If there is in fact credible evidence that a radio station has actively supported or incited violence, then the broadcasters should be subject to investigation and sanction, with all appropriate judicial guarantees,” said Vivanco. “But closing down a station this way certainly looks like retaliation for coverage the government didn’t like.”

“While the government office that reviews radio licensing issued a report in December 2008 stating that the La Voz de Bagua station did not meet the requirements established in the permit, no action was taken to close the station for seven months,” added Vivanco. “In fact, during this time, the government approved a license for the station’s antenna and invited it to apply for a certification for its transmitter, which the station owner did in March 2009. Nonetheless, three days after the incidents in Bagua and the minister’s statements, the government cancelled the station’s broadcasting license.”

The station’s owner presented an administrative appeal before the vice minister of communications on June 19, asking him to reverse his decision to revoke the station’s license.

“The government has legitimate authority to regulate the broadcasting spectrum in Peru,” said Vivanco. “But if it does so in a manner that appears to arbitrarily limit the work of a station that reports on violent incidents during anti-government demonstrations, it can undermine freedom of expression, rather than advancing it.”

Congress ‘petrogate’ commission demands journalists divulge their sources

Two of Peru’s most respected investigative journalists are under pressure from a special congressional commission to reveal their sources of phone tapped conversations that revealed an oil concession kickback scheme that rocked President Alan García’s administration.

Pablo O’Brien, an investiagative reporter for daily El Comercio told CPN Radio that attempts by lawmakers probing the illegal phone tapping to coerce him and his former boss, Fernando Ampuero, into revealing their sources “absurd.”

Peru’s Constitution and statutes protest a Journalists professional duty to protect the identities of anonymous sources.

During one of the Commission’s sessions, on Monday, legislators considered pressing charges against O’Brian, as well as Ampuero. Though the motion was not adopted, the Commission has scheduled a meeting with Mateo Castañeda, the state attorney responsible for the illegal wiretapping investigation, to determine if the journalists’ professional secrecy can be forcibly lifted.

“Every person has the right not to reveal their convictions and observe professional secrecy,” El Comercio stated on Tuesday. “Certain politicians must understand that obtaining information is only possible because there is a tacit agreement between the journalist and his source, based on the principle of trust and on the communicator’s respect for professional secrecy” regarding the sources of information obtained in confidence.

Congress’s petrogate commission has already petitioned the Superintendent’s Office of Banking and Insurance to subpoena phone and bank account records for political analyst Fernando Rospigliosi and lawyer José Ugaz to determine if they established any type of relationship with those responsible for the phone tapping.

In October, Rospigliosi, a former interior minister during President Alejandro Toledo’s 2001-2006 government and a longtime opponent of Garcia, said an anonymous person left him an audio CD, which he later delivered to Sunday night investigative news program Cuarto Poder’s TV studio.

Cuarto Poder broadcast the audio recordings of Perupetro Vice President Alberto Quimper and Romulo León Alegría, a prominent member of Garcia’s ruling Aprista party, discussing under-the-table payments conditioned on Discover Petroleum obtaining oil exploration concessions.

According to the recordings, Quimper, Leon and Ernesto Arias-Schreiber, the legal representative of Discover in Peru, were to receive $10,000 monthly in exchange for steering lucrative oil contracts to the Norwegian oil exploration firm.

The scandal, dubbed “petrogate,” led the government to suspend five joint exploration and development contracts recently awarded to Discover Petroleum and state-owned oil company Petroperu. The minister of Energy and Mines, Juan Valdivia, immediately handed in his resignation and only days later, the whole cabinet and cabinet chief Jorge del Castillo resigned. Quimper was taken into custody shortly after he sought refuge in a private medical clinic, and León turned himself in to police in November.

Congress rapidly set up a special commission to investigate the León-Quimper case, as well as other illegal wiretapping operations. Individuals, such as O’Brian and Ampuero, along with heads of private security firms suspected of carrying out the surveillance of Leon and Quimper, have been called in for questioning.

Ampuero, former chief of El Comercio’s investigations unit, was sacked in late October, shortly after he released some of the petroaudios. This apparently did not please the Miro Quesada family, and other El Comercio Group stockholders. Before long, Peru21’s editor, Augusto Alvarez Rodrich, quit in protest under similar circumstances. Peru21 is owned by the El Comercio Group.

Carolina Lizárraga, ex-President of the now defunct National Anti-corruption Office, and Iván Meini, former head of the Office’s investigation unit, are next in line, and scheduled to appear before Congress’s commission on Friday. They allegedly manipulated copies of the petroaudios before they were released.

It remains unknown who carried out the eight-month “petroaudios” wiretapping operation, and no potential suspects — with the exception of Andrick Service S.R.L. — have been tied to the cases currently being investigated. Managed by frigate Captain Erick del Águila Villar as well as retired officers from the Peruvian Navy, the private security firm have been accused of illegal phone tapping and spying by former Foreign Affairs Minister Francisco Tudela.

In Peru, phone conversations can only be surreptitiously recorded by an outside third party with a judicial authorization for investigations on drug trafficking, terrorism, kidnapping or extortion. Possessing wiretapping equipment is a crime.

In July 2000, a Computer Crimes Act prohibiting unlawful access, use, interference or damage to a system, database, or network of computers was adopted and codified in the Penal Code.

And, the Peruvian Constitution sets out extensive privacy, data protection and freedom of information rights. Article 2, for example, states that “every person has the right… to secrecy and the inviolability of communications and private documents.”

The petroaudios scandal is a major issue in Peru, where citizens are all too familiar with illegal wiretapping. The “petroaudio” scandal is just the latest reminder of the 1990s, when surveillance by the government against citizens was rampant during the authoritarian regime of President Alberto Fujimori.

His spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos’ National Intelligence Service, or SIN, conducted widespread surveillance and illegal phone tapping of rival politicians, journalists, business executives, government ministers, and even judges.

Montesinos, who controlled a vast web of corruption, has testified before Peruvian courts that Fujimori ordered the surveillance, and stated that the equipment was purchased with funds from each of the armed forces, as well as the SIN, with Fujimori’s authorization. Sophisticated Israeli phone-tapping equipment was used to monitor telephone conversations, and copies of the conversations were delivered to Montesinos.

Today, the market for private security firms is booming in Peru. Companies, such as Andrick Service S.R.L., provide services mainly to the mining, oil and natural gas industries, most of which are foreign-owned.

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