Court rejects Keiko Fujimori’s call to return to prison for graft Corruption News

Prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison sentence for Fujimori for allegations of corrupt funding in previous election campaigns.

A Peruvian judge has rejected the prosecutor’s request to return Keiko Fujimori, the presidential candidate, to prison for money laundering and corruption for failing to meet his bail requirements.

Fujimori, the eldest daughter of incumbent President Alberto Fujimori, is on trial for allegedly receiving $ 1.2 million to $ 2 million in 2011 and 2016 from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund previous presidential campaigns.

Prosecutor José Domingo Pérez on Monday told Judge Víctor Zúñiga that Fujimori had violated bail restrictions by having contact with a witness in the case.

However, the judge warned that he was “baseless” because he had not been given a warning, and extended Fujimo’s bail.

For his part, Fujimori said the prosecutor’s request was “arbitrary, disproportionate and unfair,” as dozens of his friends have shown outside.

Fujimori has already spent 16 months in pretrial detention. He has denied the allegations against him.

Fujimori was released on parole in May last year due to the outbreak of coronavirus, and was banned from leaving Peru or communicating with defendants or witnesses in the case.

Prosecutors have said they will seek a 30-year prison sentence for the 46-year-old daughter of a former president convicted of corruption.

Potential fire point

The hearings were potentially happening in the country already at a time of great tension, following the second round of the June 6 presidential vote.

Fujimori was confronted by the socialist Pedro Castillo.

Castillo has declared himself the winner After coming out with 44,058 more votes with more than 17.5 million votes.

However, Fujimori has refused to accept the defeat and has asked for a disqualification of up to 200,000 votes for fraud, and has not provided any public evidence.

The election put Castillo, a teacher sustained mostly in poor rural areas and union leader, against the free market Fujimori, the protector of a powerful family that protects most of Peru’s elite cities.

Thousands of supporters of the two candidates took to the streets over the weekend to call for democracy to prevail, and the election jury claims Fujimori’s fraud to work faster.

If Fujimori won the election, the criminal proceedings against him would be suspended until the end of his administration.

Ipsos Peru’s pollster said a statistical analysis of the polls showed no evidence of abnormal voting patterns in favor of any candidate.