Keiko Fujimori, leader of the Fuerza Popular majority in Congress, was taken into preliminary custody Wednesday morning, when she arrived at the district attorney’s office to answer questions on what is known as the “cocktails case.” The detention is for 10 days.
Arrest warrants have also been issued for nineteen other people, including the party treasurer, Jaime Yoshiyama, who served as cabinet member and premier during Alberto Fujimori’s two administrations.
Fujimori’s lawyer, Giuliana Lazo, called the arrest “excessive and abusive”, with no justification other than she was president of the Fuerza Popular party during the 2011 presidential campaign.
This blow to Keiko Fujimori follows her party’s failure two days ago in the municipal and regional elections to secure any significant towns and none of the 25 regions for their candidates. Last week also, the courts annulled the presidential pardon of her father, former President Alberto Fujimori, who is hospitalized in a private clinic to evade his return to prison to serve the remaining 13 years of a 25-year sentence.
The so-called cocktails case is an investigation into money laundering and organized crime, linked in part to the Odebrecht campaign donations investigation. Keiko Fujimori denies receiving any funding from the Brazilian construction firm.
According to the District Attorney’s office, the Fujimori party is suspected of camouflaging illicit money through donations raised ostensibly at a total of five cocktail parties during both the 2011 and 2016 presidential campaigns. The party reported raising S/ 4.38 million (approx. $1.2 mn), but the party never gave the names of the donors in its financial statement and the size of the parties has been questioned.
The investigation was opened in August 2016, and raids were made in mid-December 2017 on the two party headquarters and on Yoshiyama’s home, where police confiscated computers and files of documents.
Keiko Fujimori narrowly lost the 2016 presidential campaign to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, following news reports only weeks before the election that her party and campaign manager, Joaquin Ramirez, was under suspicion of money laundering and possibly drug trafficking. She lost in the run-off but her party secured a majority in the Congress, pushing Kuczynski to resign in April this year to avoid impeachment now is attempting to corner President Martin Vizcarra in his plans for a referendum to combat corruption.
Today’s arrest warrant was issued by Justice Richard Concepción Carhuancho, the same judge who ordered the 18-month preventive arrest last year of former President Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia, also on charges of money laundering. The Humalas were released in April this year after nine months in prison, on the ruling by the Constitutional Court that the detention was “excessive.” They are being investigated for receiving $3 million in campaign funds in 2011 from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht and using the money to buy personal properties. Only one property was bought after receiving the funds, the rest are family and inherited properties.
Campaign financing so far, however, has few if any restrictions, in receiving or spending, and is not illegal. In the more than four years of investigation, triggered by notes in Heredia’s journals, the D.A.’s office has yet to charge either of the Humalas with any crime.
this is our political sitution where a pat of country is ruled for the fujimorismo’s party which is the actual congress , they have the law and at the time it seems like they want get out their actual leader ,keiko fujimori, in my oinion while they are in the government our country won’t reach the expectations as develpoped country , i need to be more conscious when we will choose the candidates , only this the correct way and not to pass another critical political situation like that.