The regional counselor Christian López accused Jean-Paul Benavente for allegedly leading an alleged criminal organization in the Regional Government of Cuzco. Said network would have appropriated money from the State through payments for services, training, consultancies and apparently non-existent purchase orders..
The complaint was made in 2021 and, in May of this year, the case went from Lime to Cusco, in charge of the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime, an instance that ordered a preliminary investigation against 40 defendantsbetween regional government officials and members of the National Police of Peru.
Due to the time that has elapsed, now, Counselor López, in statements to La República, said that the process is emblematic, but that the process has not yet been speeded up, which generates distrust in the population.
In addition, he assured that, with the evidence submitted, it is reaffirmed that there is a criminal organization in Cusco and that the Public Ministry works really slowly, action that would lend itself to suspicion.
“The best friend of corruption is impunity. For much less, in Fist Y Arequipa, the governors are arrested. In the case of Cusco, all the accusations were proven with documents that we not only provided to the Prosecutor’s Office, but also to the media,” López said.
For counselors Christian López and María Regina Becerra, who also denounced the incident, to date preventive detention should have been issued for at least one of the alleged members.
The case
López and his colleague Becerra, in July 2021, filed the criminal organization complaint against the regional governor of Cusco. It not only includes Jean Paul Benavente, but also officials from his management, such as attorney Pedro Galicia, who was recently suspended from office.
Supposedly, the regional government carried out phantom consultancies and in many cases they were awarded to untrained personnel.
On December 15, 2021, Christian López, the regional councilor of the province of Cusco, submitted documents that would indicate evidence of the existence of the alleged criminal organization.
The documents were sent to the Supraprovincial Corporate Specialized Prosecutor’s Office against Organized Crime in Lima. After that, the case was transferred to the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime in Cusco.
In May 2022, Vicente Percy Huamán, the provincial prosecutor in charge of the case, considered that the complaint met the conditions to start the preliminary investigation. Huamán called those under investigation Los Elegantes del Sur.
