Peruvian judge Víctor Zúñiga announced on Tuesday that next January 23 he hopes to issue a resolution on the request that opposition leader Keiko Fujimori serve 36 months in preventive detention while being investigated for an alleged money laundering during his 2011 election campaigns and 2016.
The judge, who has been conducting hearings on this request for three weeks, advanced the date to issue his resolution after indicating to Fujimori's lawyer, Giulliana Loza, that the last session of allegations of the Prosecutor and the defense will be held on Saturday 18 from January.
During the hearing on Tuesday, the prosecutor José Domingo Pérez finished supporting the procedural danger arguments and the evidence to support the preventive detention, while Loza replied the accusations and reiterated that they should be rejected.
CONDEMNATION AND LEAK HAZARD
Prosecutor Pérez, a member of the special team investigating the Lava Jato case in Peru, estimated that Fujimori can be sentenced to almost 19 years in prison for crimes of money laundering aggravated by criminal organization and obstruction of justice.
He stressed that this "serious penalty" justifies his request for preventive detention before the possibility of "risk of escape" of the leader of the Po[CENSORED]r Force party.
The prosecutor added that Fujimori does not have family roots in the country, having no property in his name, and said that he has even spent 13 months in pretrial detention, until November 30, without revealing that large businessmen had given millionaire contributions economic undeclared to your election campaign.
"The State cannot guarantee that Keiko Fujimori will not escape," he said before saying that "it cannot be determined that it has family ties or roots."
DEFENSE REJECTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Attorney Loza responded that the Prosecutor's Office has not presented any “solid element” to support her request and said that in a democratic and plural society “the measure of pretrial detention is not justifiable”.
After ensuring that there is no danger of leakage or obstruction of the investigations, the lawyer asked the Prosecutor's Office to avoid being based on “assumptions, conjectures, speculations and deductions” and said that Fujimori receives a “discriminatory treatment” for being the leader of a political party .
In this regard, he indicated that Fuerza Po[CENSORED]r "is not only supported by funds of private origin" and that Fujimori is "president of his party", although "he has no political activity" in the face of the legislative elections on January 26.
“The activity (of Fujimori) is public. She is with her husband, her daughters, visiting her parents. She is not going to escape, ”he said.
FINAL STAGE OF THE PROCESS
The hearings of the request for pretrial detention entered its final stage after last week the Judiciary declared unfounded an objection filed by Loza against Judge Zúñiga for an alleged lack of impartiality.
Both prosecutor Pérez and the head of the special team investigating the Lava Jato case in Peru, Rafael Vela, have indicated that this investigation is in its final stage and the formal accusation for the start of an oral trial can be presented next February.
In that context, Pérez bases his new request for pretrial detention on the seriousness of the accusations, since he accuses Keiko of the alleged commission of the crimes of money laundering, illicit association, criminal organization, against the administration of justice (false statement in administrative procedure and procedural fraud) and against public faith (generic falsehood). EFE