Former President Alberto Fujimori – sentenced to 25 years of prison last April for sanctioning a paramilitary death squad – is back in court, now facing corruption charges.
Fujimori, 70, is accused of illegally channeling nearly $15 million in government funds as a bonus to his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos. The money was transferred just two months before Fujimori’s 10-year presidency collapsed due to a whirlwind of scandal, which erupted after videos emerged showing Montesinos bribing opposition politicians and media magnates.
On Monday, Fujimori admitted to the allegations, but denied culpability, arguing that the payment to Montesinos was not illegal because he had later reimbursed the state.
“I only acknowledge the facts, I do not accept legal responsibility, the punishment or the civil reparations,” Fujimori told the court at the start of his trial on Monday.
Montesinos, who fled to Panama on a private yacht just before Fujimori’s downfall, is currently serving 20 years at the top-security naval prison in the port of Callao on multiple convictions for everything from bribing media barons, judges and legislators to selling assault rifles to Colombian FARC guerrillas.
A master of subterfuge, Montesinos cultivated an atmosphere of paranoia and fear among Peru’s political, business and military elite with rumors that he kept a vast collection of wiretapped phone conversations and videos documenting orgies, illicit drug use and myriad acts of corruption.
Prosecutor Avelino Guillen has asked the court to sentence Fujimori to an eight-year prison term, as well as order him to pay $661,000 in damages.
Last April, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, following a verdict of guilty on four counts of human rights violations. Fujimori was found guilty on all charges for sanctioning a paramilitary death squad that gunned down 25 people in two notorious massacres during the first two years of his 10-year authoritarian rule.
Fujimori is already serving a six-year sentence for a separate case in which he was found guilty of abusing power.
