HomeNewsFrom Maverick to Crook: The Predictable Downfall of Peru's Pedro Castillo
NEWS

From Maverick to Crook: The Predictable Downfall of Peru's Pedro Castillo

PERU / 8 DEC 2022 BY CHRIS DALBY EN

Peru’s former President Pedro Castillo is both unoriginal and unique.

Unoriginal in that he is the sixth president in six years and one of several to face allegations of corruption. Unique in that he is the first to face an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office while still president and to try an apparent coup d’état to stay in power.

After a tumultuous 24-hour period in which Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress and rule by decree before promptly being removed from office and arrested, he is facing potentially serious charges.

Some of the charges are new, including a count of sedition announced by the Attorney General shortly after his arrest on December 7. Most date to earlier this year when an investigation was first opened into Castillo for criminal organization, influence peddling, and collusion.

This marked the expansion of an inquiry that had seen Castillo’s former minister of transport and communications, Juan Silva Villegas, arrested and six congressmen placed under investigation.  

SEE ALSO: Corruption at Every Level: Who Profits from Destruction of Peru's Amazon

Castillo and Silva Villegas allegedly ran a corrupt network of officials within the Ministry of Transport and Communications (Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones - MTC), which illegally controlled the tender for the construction of the Tarata bridge in northern Peru. This public works contract was apparently given to Peruvian and Chinese companies close to the former president in exchange for bribes.

In parallel, Castillo also faces an investigation into his alleged role in influencing Peru’s state-owned oil company, PetroPerú, into buying biofuel from a petroleum company, Heaven Petroleum Operators. The owner of said company, Samir Abuyadeh, was arrested in November and maintained he met with Castillo twice at Peru’s presidential palace before the deal went through. Castillo has denied this.

Finally, Castillo is alleged to have helped award public works contracts worth $8.6 million from the Ministry of Housing and Construction to contractors connected to his family and friends.

InSight Crime Analysis

Four of Castillo’s direct predecessors all face or have faced charges related to corruption in public works contracts connected to Brazilian giant, Odebrecht. Castillo does not appear to have learned any lessons from this.  

Alejandro Toledo, president from 2001 to 2006, stood accused of money laundering and criminal conspiracy for receiving up to $20 million from Brazilian construction giant, Odebrecht for being granted contracts to build sections of Peru’s Southern Interoceanic Highway. He is currently in the United States, but Peru has demanded his extradition. Toledo was the first of four presidents to be accused of corruption related to Odebrecht.

His successor, Alan García, who ruled Peru twice from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011, committed suicide in 2019 as police came to arrest him for his alleged role in the same Odebrecht scandal. The level of bribery he was reportedly involved in was staggering, having received up to $143 million and used around $29 million to bribe other officials to favor Odebrecht over three different governments.

SEE ALSO: Peru's Anti-Corruption Crusade Grows Weaker

Former President Ollanta Humala, who governed Peru from 2011 to 2016, is accused of receiving around $3 million from Odebrecht in exchange for granting the firm public works contracts. After a period under house arrest, he was released, but his criminal trial began in early 2022.

Finally, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who governed as president from 2016 to 2018 and had been prime minister under Toledo from 2005 to 2006, was sentenced to three years under house arrest in 2019. He was found to have helped facilitate contracts for Odebrecht to build the Interoceanic Highway and a hydro-energy project in Peru.

Astonishingly, while Castillo has had no connections to the Odebrecht scandal, he appears to have run very similar schemes within government to those which his predecessors were brought down for.

Giving contracts to friends; taking bribes for public works; naming officials who supported his schemes; firing those who noticed the irregularities. For all his electoral bluster about being a political outsider, his reported crimes once in office look to have been as run-of-the-mill as they come.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

COLOMBIA / 26 MAY 2022

Prosecutors in Colombia held a hearing with the partner of alleged drug trafficker Guillermo León Acevedo, alias "Memo Fantasma," on…

ARMS TRAFFICKING / 8 JUL 2022

Haiti’s Customs Agency has seized an extremely large quantity of illegally imported ammunition.

COLECTIVOS / 12 JUL 2023

Extortion, black markets, repressing political opponents: The Cupaz react with brutal efficiency to opportunities across Venezuela.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…