Pedro Pablo Kuczynski denied that Alberto Fujimori's pardon was negotiated: “Already in the campaign I said I should serve time at home”

This Wednesday, March 23, the oral trial was held against the former congressman of the Popular Force, Kenji Fujimori and others. Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski participated in it as a witness. He testified about the pardon to Alberto Fujimori Fujimori and stated that he gave it as his own edition.

It is recalled that Fujimori Higuchi and others are being investigated for the crimes of bribery and influence-trafficking.

The presence of the former president was due to the fact that in the last days of his administration and after his resignation, audios and videos (The 'Mamani Audios' and 'Mamani Videos') came to light that would reveal an alleged negotiated to buy votes against PPK's vacancy.

INDULTO

Kuczynski acknowledged that on 24 December he granted more than 20 humanitarian pardons, including former President Alberto Fujimori Fujimori. On this, he stated that it was his decision to grant presidential grace and that he had begun to consider the option since the presidential campaign. Thus, he ruled out that there has been any agreement or negotiation with a congressman to do so.

“If you look at the news of the election campaign, I had already said that it seemed to me that for humanitarian reasons, Mr. Fujimori and other prisoners should be able to serve their sentence at home. Since there was no legislation at that time to do that, at the beginning of 2017 I began to investigate the possibility of a humanitarian pardon and publicly announced it several times, even once quite noteworthy during my visit to Spain in June 2017 in a statement I gave to the newspaper The Economist,” he explained.

He asserted that the route of humanitarian pardon was given because there was no legislature to allow Alberto Fujimori to serve his sentence with a house arrest, because of the seriousness of his sentences and the sentence he served. In addition, he noted that the process for dictating grace was the same as that stipulated in the legal norms.

“There is an established procedure in the case of a humanitarian pardon . It's for health reasons. INPE, the National Penitentiary Institute, has a board of doctors that gives an opinion on the subject's state of health, after an extensive examination. Then, the Ministry of Justice makes a decision (on) whether or not to recommend the pardon,” explained the former president.

He noted that the medical board indicated various ills in the medical report, but two were highlighted. “One was ventricular fibrillation from which Mr. Alberto Fujimori suffered and continues to suffer; and the other was a recurrent cancer of the tongue for which he has been operated on many times,” he said.

THE 'MAMANI VIDEOS' AND MEETING WITH MOISÉS MAMANI

The former president also denied that he had seen the videos and audios recorded by the late former congressman Moisés Mamani Colquehuanca. These were revealed three months after he gave the pardon to Alberto Fujimori.

“The so-called Mamani audios and videos appeared the day before my resignation in March 2018 and I never saw any videos and only heard about the audios through the press,” he said through the video call.

In the same way, he said that he only met with him once. Mamani would have asked him for public office, but Kuczynski denied it. The meeting would have taken place approximately in March 2018.

“Only once he came to my house. He was looking for a position as president of the Bolivia-Peru Binational Agreement on Lake Titicaca and I told him that this was impossible, that that position was by a treaty and that it was already occupied. The meeting lasted two, three minutes,” he said.

MEETINGS WITH KENJI FUJIMORI AND FORMER CONGRESSMEN

On the other hand, Kuczynski acknowledged having met with Kenji Fujimori Higuchi, Guillermo Bocángel and Bienvenido Ramirez. The three former parliamentarians, and former adviser Alexei Toledo Vallejos, are being identified by the Prosecutor's Office as participants in these alleged wrongful acts.

He said that the meeting took place within the framework of the 2017 Coastal Child Phenomenon, approximately between February and March of that year. “With Kenji Fujimori I did (I met) at the Government Palace and then on a trip we took together to Tumbes, with the other two congressmen,” said the former president.

“He came to the Palace as a result of the Coastal Child Phenomenon and came to bring some donations for the collection that my wife was doing in the main courtyard of Palacio. Then I walked him around the residence of Palacio, where he had lived as a child. There he told me that he and his family hoped that one day his father could receive a humanitarian pardon,” he said.

Regarding the trip to Tumbes, Kuczynski said: “During my trips to Peru, of which I have done many as president, the congressmen of the region have always been invited to visit, whatever their political color.”