BFF-05 Peru president sacks justice minister over judicial corruption scandal

307

ZCZC

BFF-05

PERU-CORRUPTION-JUSTICE

Peru president sacks justice minister over judicial corruption scandal

LIMA, July 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra
dismissed Justice Minister Salvador Heresi on Friday after the publication of
a series of audio recordings that sparked a scandal over the sale of
sentences and influence peddling.

“For the health of the justice system reform, I’ve asked minister Heresi
to resign,” said Vizcarra on Twitter. “The period Peru is going through
requires firm action.”

The audio recordings scandal had already claimed eight victims before
Heresi, with five judges and three judicial officials suspended earlier on
Friday. Vizcarra’s move came after a conversation between Heresi and Supreme
Court judge Cesar Hinostroza was played on television. Hinostroza is one of
the judges at the center of the audio recordings scandal.

Heresi confirmed on Twitter that he had tendered his resignation so that
Vizcarra could push through the judicial reform he had announced on
Wednesday, when thousands of Peruvians marched through the streets of the
capital Lima to protest against corruption in the justice system.

Heresi, though, insisted the published recordings “don’t contain any
suggestion of illegality or lack of morality or ethics.”

In the recording, Heresi asks Hinostroza to come to his office to talk to
him about a legal initiative, without giving any details.

“I needed your advice because there is a whole issue that Congress wanted,
on a multiparty level, to work at the legislative level in the area of
criminal law and there was a sentence that you worked on,” Heresi told the
magistrate.

The highest-ranking judge suspended is Walter Rios, the Superior Appeals
Court president in the city of Callao, near Lima, whom anti-corruption public
prosecutor Amado Enco said “cannot, after such serious events, be allowed to
walk down the street. He’s committed serious crimes.”

The diffusion of inflammatory audio recordings began on Sunday on
investigative journalism website IDL-Reporteros and the Panorama program on
television station Canal 5, after which the public prosecutor’s office opened
an investigation into suspected influence peddling.

“We knew that the judicial system in Peru did not operate transparently.
The audio recordings are the proof that was missing,” Vox Populi analyst Luis
Benavente told AFP.

Vizcarra on Friday appointed a committee of six jurists headed by ex-
chancellor Allan Wagner and gave them 12 days to deliver a judicial reform
proposal.

There is a feeling of deja vu in Peru, where two ex-presidents — Alberto
Fujimori in 2000 and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in March — were brought down by
undercover audio or video recordings.

BSS/AFP/SSS/0911 hrs