Peruvian justice sentences Kenji Fujimori to four years in prison

( Spanish) — The Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Peru sentenced Kenji Fujimori, former congressman and son of former President Alberto Fujimori, to four years and six months in prison for the crime of aggravated influence peddling.

However, the Chamber determined that the execution of the sentence is suspended until the sentence is “firm and/or consented” in the second instance.

Meanwhile, the former congressman must comply with measures such as appearing before the corresponding judicial authority.

The complaint that started this process was presented in the Congress of the Republic in June 2018 by Fuerza Popular, a party led by his sister, Keiko Fujimori, and from which he had already resigned that year.

After leaving the hearing, Kenji Fujimori declined to testify before the press.

In June 2018, Fujimori, then a congressman, and three of his colleagues were suspended from office by the Peruvian Congress after being accused of buying votes to prevent the removal of then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. In its ruling on Tuesday, the Criminal Chamber sentenced former congressmen Guillermo Bocangel and Bienvenido Ramírez for the same crime, also to 4 years and six months, and Alexei Toledo to four years, all with execution suspended until the sentence is stand firm. is seeking reactions from Fujimori and the other former lawmakers to the ruling, but has so far received no response.

The complaint was based on recordings released by Fuerza Popular and which, according to parliamentarians from that party, allegedly proved the accusations.

The Supreme Court said during the reading of the sentence that the audios presented as evidence during the trial that followed Fujimori were valid and had not been manipulated. The judge read the transcription of the audios to support part of the sentence.

Kenji Fujimori rejected the accusations at the time and said that the information was misrepresented.

This group of congressmen was suspended while the Peruvian justice system investigated the complaint and made a decision on the case, which occurred on Tuesday.

Opposition congressmen filed two vacancy motions against then-President Kuczynski. The first was put to a vote on December 21, 2017 for his “alleged relationship with the Odebrecht company”, for which the then president was accused of “moral incapacity”, a mechanism contemplated in the Constitution, but did not reach the necessary votes. to remove him from the Presidency.

The second motion was presented in March 2018 for the alleged purchase of votes that, according to Fuerza Popular parliamentarians, Kenji Fujimori and other congressmen carried out to avoid the vacancy of Kuczynski, who on December 24, 2017 granted a humanitarian pardon to Alberto Fujimori, former president who had been sentenced for crimes committed during his government.

After denying that vote buying, Kuczynski resigned from the Presidency in March 2018, after the second vacancy motion was filed against him, but before it was voted on.

Kuczynski then said that he did not want to “be a stumbling block” and that he did not want “neither the country nor his family to continue suffering with the uncertainty of recent times.”

In April 2018, Kuczynski told that “not a single position, not a single dollar, nothing” had been offered in those vacancy processes.