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News > Latin America

Peru Prosecutor: Money Laundered Through US Banks To Keiko Fujimori

  • Keiko Fujimori in a Lima court after the judge ordered her to 36 months of preventative detention alleging she took Odebrecht money for her 2011 campaign.

    Keiko Fujimori in a Lima court after the judge ordered her to 36 months of preventative detention alleging she took Odebrecht money for her 2011 campaign. | Photo: Justice Palace Peru via Reuters

Published 27 November 2018
Opinion

Prosecutors in the corruption case against Keiko Fujimori say illicit funds were wired through JP Morgan and other banks abroad to her 2011 campaign.

The main prosecutor in the money laundering case against congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of convicted former President Alberto Fujimori, and her advisors is requesting foreign banks to disclose information on money transfers to Fujimori's Popular Force party ahead of her 2011 presidential campaign. The funds are believed to be illegal.

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The lead state prosecutor in the case against Fujimori, Jose Domingo Perez, is requiring banks in the United States, Britain, and Tokyo to turn over information regarding money transfers made by the friends and relatives of former Fujimori campaign manager Jaime Yoshiyama, who each wired thousands of dollars of unknown origin to the coffers of Popular Force.

Strong evidence already exists that Fujimori and her former aid Vicente Silva Checa registered millions in contributions falsely attributed to people within Peru to her 2011 electoral campaign. For this crime, they were sentenced to 36 months in preventive detention. Now, Perez says there is evidence that Yoshiyama siphoned nearly a half a million dollars from abroad to Fujimori’s party accounts.

At least 10 people under investigation in the far-reaching corruption case have testified that Jaime Yoshiyama appealed to relatives and close friends to wire money to the Fujimori campaign through U.S.-based Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America accounts seven years ago.

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Perez is trying to trace the origin of the money to see if they were licit funds or not. Fujimori is being accused of accepting US$1.2 million in illicit funds from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht for her presidential run.

So far the prosecutor knows that Yoshiyama 's relative, Joon Lim Lee, transferred some US$65,000 from a Wells Fargo Bank account to Peru and that the sons of Popular Force congressman Carlos Blanco Oropeza made international transfers to the campaign.

Oscar Moritani Kutsuma, partner of Yoshiyama’s nephew, Jorge Yoshiyama is also implicated in the laundering case. He sent US$49,950 from a Citibank account in New York.

In total 24 transfers were made, adding up to US$492,248. Other transfers were made through Deutsche Bank and Scotia Bank based in Germany and Canada, respectively.

Last January when authorities questioned Jaime Yoshiyama regarding suspicious transfers by his family to Fujimori's 2011 campaign he said he didn’t remember any such contributions.

"I do not remember that close relatives made contributions," Yoshiyama answered.

This case, along with a judicial system graft scandal and the embezzlement case against former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned this March after getting very close to being impeached by Congress, has rocked the South American country and prompted current president Martin Vizcarra to take several measures to go after systematic government corruption.

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