The management of the president of the Congress of the Republic, Alejandro Soto Reyes, will come to an end this Friday, July 26when —after the election of the new members of the Board of Directors— swear in his replacement. After that, he will come down from the top of the House to take his place in the Alianza para el Progreso bench. Two legislative periods have passed marked by questions and accusations against him, which were faced by the legislator with threats of criminal charges against journalists and silence before the press.
After assuming his position at the end of July 2023, Alejandro Soto He was quickly questioned. Some voices within Congress were calling for him to leave his position on the Board of Directors less than a month after taking office. The silence of his party and the support of allied parliamentary groups allowed him to keep his position, but he accepted the initiation of investigations against him.
Investigations reach the Ethics Commission
In August alone, one month after taking up his position as president of the Parliamentthe Ethics Commission approved an ex officio investigation for 3 complaints. The response of the member of the bench of Cesar Acuna was to support the start of these inquiries, thus managing to reduce the pressure in the face of calls for censorship against him from the left.
The first case was for the hiring of the sister-in-law of Alejandro Soto as a worker in his congressional office in 2021. In response, he noted that he arranged for the employment relationship with Yeshira Peralta to be established during 2021, before he met Lizbeth Peralta Salas, who is the mother of the congressman’s 11-month-old son.
The second case is for benefiting from the so-called ‘Soto Law’, an initiative for which he voted in favour in the plenary sessionIn May of this year, Law 31751 was passed. Soto was about to face the consequences of a fraud conviction, but this legislation prevented him from being subjected to legal proceedings, as it was a law promoted by him that ended up benefiting him.
The third in Ethics was for the complaint that the president of the Congress He would use troll accounts to attack and insult congressmen, in addition to defending him on his social networks. Employees of his office would carry out this type of work during working hours and would even provide a financial contribution to finance advertising in favor of Alejandro Soto’s image.
It should be noted that, at that time, there were three more complaints. Serious cases such as the alleged fraud were left out committed by Alejandro Soto against the company Waynapicchu Transportationnot having declared a debt of S/10,000 when he was a candidate for Congress that prevented him from assuming office and the irregular construction of his home in a monumental area in the the Incas’ Sacred Valleyin the Cusco region. It was indicated that the Ethics Commission will adhere to what is established in the Congress Regulations, which indicate that legislators who violate the Code of Ethics during the exercise of their functions, but not before assuming office, may be reported to this body.
More complaints appear against Alejandro Soto
In September 2023, three months after taking office, a new complaint appeared. This time, ‘Panorama’ issued a report in which it warns that the member of Alliance for Progress (APP) He would have used the same thesis to irregularly obtain his master’s and doctoral degrees.
According to the Sunday paper, Soto Reyes submitted the same text in 2016 to obtain the master’s degree with which he obtained the doctorate in 2017 from the Universidad San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC).
Except for some minor modifications, the text entitled ‘The civil liability of authorities elected by popular vote stripped of their immunity by reasons of vacancy’ – authored by Alejandro Soto – is a twin text to the other mentioned. Thus, the current president of Parliament obtained two academic degrees in record time. The similarities appear throughout the thesis, both in the part of the justification of the research, the methodology and in the conclusions. The most striking thing is that he does the same in the Acknowledgements and dedications section.
Months ago, a journalistic report revealed the alleged plagiarism of 67% of the doctoral thesis of the politician from Cusco for obtaining the academic degree. The text, after being submitted to the analysis of the Turnitin program, showed that it contains entire copies of pages of articles by two other authors, who were not duly cited. The academic document registered 67% plagiarism.
At the same time, several of these complaints reached the Office of the Attorney Generalwhich in the Currently they continue their regular course of research. One of these cases was the one in which Alejandro Soto is accused of the alleged crime of extortion for the ‘voluntary contributions’ of his employees to spread his parliamentary work on social networks, an investigation that started from the WhatsApp conversations of the advisors of the head of the Board of Directors. Because of this, he was included in the group of those alleged to have cut Congress’ salaries.
Finally, despite criticism and questioning of his management, and the unexplained allegations, Soto Reyes managed to complete his term as president of the Congress of the Republic without being censured by the left-wing parties. Despite this, his name was one of those mentioned as a possible APP alternative for reelection for the 2024-2025 period. However, César Acuña’s party would have opted for another name.
