![[Img #74664]](https://thelatestnews.world/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/James-Watson-The-controversial-genius-behind-the-double-helix-150x150.jpg)
First modification: Last modification:
President Pedro Castillo has described as “false” and as a form of “coup d’état” the constitutional accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office against him presented on Tuesday to Congress. He is accused of being the “leader of a criminal organization” that directed public works in exchange for economic benefits.
Reports the RFI correspondent in Lima, Carlos Noriega
In addition to President Castillo, the National Prosecutor’s Office accuses two former ministers and part of the president’s family environment. His sister-in-law is in pretrial detention. Against his wife weighs a request to prevent him from leaving the country and two nephews – one of them a fugitive – are being investigated.
The prosecution has presented this accusation against Castillo to Congress so that he can be prosecuted with the aim of impeaching him, despite the fact that the Constitution does not allow the president to be accused during his term of office for corruption. It can only be for treason, for preventing elections or illegally closing Congress.
However, it is speculated that Congress, where the right-wing opposition is the majority, could breach the constitutional article that protects the president. Congress will have to debate in the coming days the denunciation that could lead to Castillo’s suspension, for which it needs 66 of the 130 votes of the chamber.
The Nation’s prosecutor, Patricia Benavides, the author of the accusation to Congress, has in turn been denounced for protecting her sister, who is a judge in an investigation for freeing drug traffickers in exchange for bribes.
Hours before presenting the accusation against Castillo, the Prosecutor’s Office arrested five collaborators of the president – a sixth was able to escape – raided the house of the president’s sister and the offices and homes of six congressmen.
What awaits Castillo?
The future of the president turns bleak, since the leftist alliance that supports him in Congress only has a third of the seats, insufficient to stop the suspension, which entails the separation of the position until the end of the mandate, in July 2026, although he will maintain immunity, a figure that does not prevent him from being investigated.
Castillo has accumulated six inquiries against him since he took office 15 months ago. There is no record of the prosecutor’s office denouncing a sitting president of Peru.
