The trial against Keiko Fujimori for alleged money laundering resumes in Peru

The trial of the Odebrecht case against Keiko Fujimori, the leader of the Peruvian opposition party Fuerza Popular, resumed this Tuesday in Lima with the opening of the preliminary hearing in which a judge will decide whether to admit the evidence and the witnesses of the Prosecutor’s Office against the former candidate president and 40 other defendants, including her husband, the American Mark Vito.

With this hearing, a process is resumed that was suspended in March because Fujimori was then immersed in his third electoral campaign for the presidential elections. 

The provincial prosecutor José Domingo Pérez had just presented that month the charges of money laundering, criminal organization and obstruction of justice against Fujimori and the rest of the accused for having allegedly received 1.2 million dollars (1.1 million euros) of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to finance the electoral campaigns of 2011 and 2016. Fujimori’s party did not declare said funds to the electoral authority or the Peruvian treasury, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. For these crimes, the Public Ministry requested 30 years and ten months in prison for the daughter of the autocrat Alberto Fujimori and 22 years for her husband.

The judicial process was further delayed because the defendants’ lawyers presented 15 challenges against Víctor Zúñiga, the preparatory investigation judge in charge of this file.

The “prosecution control” hearing phase – that’s what the Peruvian judicial system calls it – can last more than a year, because Judge Zúñiga handles other cases related to organized crime, informed the superior prosecutor Rafael Vela, coordinator of the special team of Lava Jato prosecutors.

“The problem is with the Judicial Power that does not have exclusive dedication to the case, the judges have the case as one of organized crime,” explains Vela. In the file of former president Ollanta Humala, also investigated for money laundering in relation to the construction company Odebrecht, the phase prior to the oral trial took a year and a half.

The former presidential candidate faces this process on probation and with the prohibition of leaving the country and of communicating with the other defendants and witnesses in the case, except her relatives and lawyer. 

The judge has even given him an express warning not to contact witnesses in the case again because, if he does, he will order that he return to preventive detention. Fujimori was already in jail from January to March 2020, when she was released due to the coronavirus pandemic. During the electoral campaign for the second round of the presidential elections on June 6, the former candidate participated in public activities with three witnesses to the case: her party spokesperson Miguel Torres, former conservative presidential candidate Lourdes Flores, and her campaign media adviser Carlos Raffo.

In this first hearing with which the trial was resumed this Tuesday, Judge Zúñiga gave the floor to a dozen defendants to explain some of the 225 briefs they have presented in recent months, in which they question the evidence presented by the prosecutors or the classification of crimes.

While this phase prior to the oral trial is taking place, Keiko Fujimori continues to be active in her Twitter and Facebook accounts and in public events that promote the vacancy (dismissal) of President Pedro Castillo, and also promotes a parliamentary investigative commission of a fraud that has not been demonstrated in the second electoral round. It also supports the mobilizations of citizens and a group of Fujimori and far-right supporters called The fighters, that weekly demonstrate with violence near the Parliament and the Government Palace.