As he left the Prosecutor’s Office after a two-and-a-half-hour hearing, critics of the leftist president threw eggs at the official vehicle that was transporting him.
Dressed in a striking red coat, the 52-year-old president appeared before the Attorney General, Patricia Benavides, in a case related to the July 20 dismissal of Interior Minister Mariano González.
The Prosecutor’s Office suspects that with the abrupt departure of González, who spent just two weeks at the head of the Interior portfolio, Castillo sought to prevent the appointment of a special police team to locate two members of his entourage who were fugitives from justice.
Castillo, who cannot be tried because he enjoys immunity, was also summoned to answer for alleged influence peddling in the state company PetroPerú and in the framework of an investigation for allegedly leading a corruption network.
The presidential lawyer, Benji Espinoza, specified that Castillo did not respond to the prosecutors’ questions, clinging to his right to remain silent and that he limited himself to making a statement denying the accusations made by the Attorney General.
“The president has responded (to the Attorney General) that when all the elements (of the six cases against him) are available, he will give the explanations they want,” the lawyer told the press.
According to the defender, “the president has proclaimed his innocence and then, when the questions came, he denied the charges.”
Castillo then explained to a group of supporters who were waiting for him at the Executive headquarters that “we have gone to tell the Attorney General that I not only reject them, I flatly deny these false accusations that have been taking place.”
The Prosecutor’s Office opened six investigations against Castillo, something unprecedented for a sitting president in Peru.
Meanwhile, his wife Lilia Paredes had been summoned for the same case in court but the hearing was suspended at the last minute, said her lawyer.
The first lady is charged with the crimes of criminal organization and money laundering, as part of the alleged network headed by her husband, according to the prosecution, which filed a request to prohibit her from leaving the country for 36 months.
– “Stories and comics” –
“When we are coordinating to move this country forward, we have to be summoned to other places (Prosecutor’s Office) to go and declare things that are manufactured, comics and stories,” Castillo said recently, in an attempt to relativize the investigations and the media interest they arouse. .
Castillo has declared twice in the Prosecutor’s Office: on June 17 for alleged bribes in public works contracts and on August 4 for alleged irregular promotions in the armed forces.
The first lady, 49, was questioned by the prosecution on July 8. Five days later she attended a subpoena from Congress, but she refused to answer questions on the recommendation of her attorney.
Castillo denies any crime by his family and claims to be the victim of a campaign to remove him from power.
Yenifer Paredes, 26, Castillo’s sister-in-law, has been serving 30 months in preventive detention for a week in the Chorrillos women’s prison, south of Lima, under the charge of integrating the “criminal organization led by the President of the Republic ”, according to prosecutor Jorge García Juárez.
In his more than 13 months in power, Castillo has lived under the siege of the Prosecutor’s Office and the persistent siege of a Congress, dominated by the right, which demands his resignation.
He has survived two impeachment attempts by Parliament and the Prosecutor’s Office cannot bring him to trial until the end of his term, on July 28, 2026, due to his privileges.
Accusations of alleged corruption at the highest level of government are not new in the Andean country, as similar situations led to the fall of the right-wing president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2018, and the centrist Martín Vizcarra in 2020.
Like Castillo, both former presidents had recurring clashes with Congress, which was controlled by their opponents.
