The Academy of Judiciary (AMAG), the institution in charge of the training, improvement and continuous updating of judges and prosecutors at all levels, was left without a general director due to alleged political interference.
This situation occurs at times when The congresswoman and former prosecutor of the Nation, Gladys Echaíz promotes a bill to create the National School of Judiciarywhich merges the Academy of Judiciary and the National Board of Justice.
The AMAG was created in the 1993 Constitution to be the prelude to the JNJ, but over time Fujimorism cut its functions. Now, it only prepares for promotion in the judicial career and in the case of new applicants, only those who wish to do so, or after they are appointed judge or prosecutor.
Another of the functions that had been reduced until 2021 was the election in public competition of its general director. The Board of Directors, made up of representatives of the Judiciary, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Bar Associations, appointed him by hand, by commission.
Public competition to elect the director of the Academy of Judiciary
In 2021, the first competition was held to elect its General Director. After winning the competition, lawyer Nathalie Betsy Ingaruca Ruíz was appointed for a three-year period, with the possibility of re-applying to continue in the position.
In August 2024, the Board of Directors of the Amag, chaired by the titular supreme judge Manuel Luján Tupez formed a special commission to carry out the public competition that was to ratify Ingaruca or elect a new general director.
The rules of the contest were drawn up, the call was made and the applicants presented themselves. However, when the contest was in the final phase, with two finalists; The Board of Directors decided to annul everything. The Commission was thanked and the call for a new selection contest was announced, without a start date.
The Board of Directors pointed out that although the current contest has been developed correctly and each of the stages is in accordance with the Constitution and the relevant regulations, it is necessary to hold another contest. He argued that it was necessary to have more contestants, which could be noticed from the initial phase of the call and not at the end.
Therefore, the new competition will be subject to requesting and receiving reports from SERVIR, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Economy and Finance to make the position of general director more attractive. This would mean that the Director General is expected to receive a higher salary, since what other opinion could the Council of Ministers or the MEF give about the director of an educational institution that prepares judges.
Once the competition was annulled, and the Special Commission was dissolved, Nathalie Ingaruca was given a vacation until her appointment was concluded on October 4 and the General Directorate was entrusted to Henry Guillén Paredes, academic director. With which he returned to the past. A hand-picked General Director.
It should be noted that this year the Academy of Judiciary must begin to prepare the judges and prosecutors who will make up the Control Authority of the Judiciary and the Public Ministry. For example, Having contact with future control magistrates is important for any lawyer who wins his cases by influence.
What happened to reach this untimely end?
According to sources from the Republic, the AMAG Board of Directors decided to cancel the contest after the intervention of Congresswoman Gladys Echaíz, the influential lawyer Luis Pacheco Mandujano and four Academy workers. All of them would have questioned the “neatness†of the contest, on social networks.
Pacheco Mandujano, linked to violent extreme right groups inside and outside Congresswarns that to the best of his knowledge and knowledge, Ingaruca does not meet the profile for the position he has been occupying for the last three years, to which he never previously presented objections.
That “irrefutable scientific knowledge” was collected by Congresswoman Echaíz and reached the Board of Directors, which served as a pretext for everything to be annulled. Therefore, in judicial circles, they have the feeling that the new contestants must meet, in addition to the formal requirements, the attributes that influential lawyers consider necessary to occupy the position of General Director.
The territory of Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto
In the investigation and audios of the “Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto� network, the Academy of Judiciary appears as a contact center between judges, prosecutors and lawyers and for the exchange of favors, between judicial authorities.
The “anger” and the fear that Natharlie Ingaruca will continue in the General Directorate of the Amag would be the concern for the support that she would have been providing to the prosecutor’s investigations, in said process.
The Special Team of prosecutors in the “Cuellos Blancos del Puerto” case has been requesting information about the contracts of José Luis Pacheco Mandujano, as Academic Director of the AMAG, in an investigation for influence peddling.
Information was also requested about citizen Teresa Valverde, one of the Academy officials who questioned the current selection and appointment contest. It seems that the underlying idea was to hide any mismanagement of the times when the “little brothers” controlled the Academy. It seems like they are achieving it.
