Luciano López, Ricardo Briceño’s lawyer, spoke with Perú21TV about the decision of the Judiciary to annul the oral trial of the Cocteles case.
Given what happened to your client, would you have the legal means to request compensation from the prosecutor José Domingo Pérez?
To José Domingo Pérez and Judge Zúñiga, because he is in charge of making the criminal process go to trial. The person who carries out the control is not the prosecutor, of course there is a responsibility of Pérez, that is very clear, but the greatest responsibility, if we had to put it on a scale, actually belongs to Judge Víctor Raúl Zúñiga. He is responsible for having let a bad case go, because Mr. Ricardo Briceño was wrongly accused that he had allegedly committed fraud to the detriment of Confiep and had deceived all the businessmen to divert funds to support the campaign. by Mrs. Keiko Fujimori. Not only was this proven to be false, but when Domingo Pérez formulated the accusation of fraud and sent it to the La Victoria Prosecutor’s Office, after six months they came to the conclusion that there was no fraud, so if there was no fraud, why did they let it pass?
What is the difference with the other cases?
We, unlike the others investigated, have not had to go to the Constitutional Court, because my case was so clear that I won it in two instances in the Judiciary; I won it before the Constitutional Court of Lima, which declared my claim founded, and I recently won it in the Supreme Court. What’s more, the Supreme Court notified me on November 13, 2024, I emphasize the dates because the case of Ricardo Briceño is totally different from the rest of those investigated in the Cocteles case, because it has nothing to do with it, which is why the title from his book What am I doing here?
So why was he included in this investigation?
I think Mr. Domingo Pérez got clouded, he raised a gigantic and poorly done case that, at least with respect to Mr. Ricardo Briceño, is somewhat crude. It was proven, a prosecutor said: ‘he did not commit fraud.’ So, how can it occur to you to have taken it to a money laundering case, but what is worse, I repeat, there the greatest responsibility lies with Judge Zúñiga who let it happen.
How to compensate for the damage done?
What Ricardo Briceño wants is for justice to be done to him and that means that he be excluded from the process. Because he should not go to any oral trial, one thing must be respected, as the Supreme Court has said, he must be excluded. And yes, legally, in my opinion, he does have to be compensated, but at least I have not spoken with Ricardo about whether that is his interest. What is of interest to him, as a person of honor and experience, is that he wants his name to not continue to be tarnished.
How many more years could such a process take?
What I see is that they are going to have to recompose the entire case, but more than recomposing I think there has to be a new evaluation because what the Constitutional Court says is that there was a notable imbalance in the equality of arms between the Prosecutor’s Office and those investigated , because the accuser was given more than a dozen opportunities to correct his accusation.
