Mark Vito, the husband of legislator Keiko Fujimori, has been ordered to remain in Peru for the next three years as state prosecutors investigate him in connection to laundering money for his wife’s 2011 presidential campaign. Fujimori was put in preventative detention on Oct. 31, also for 36 months, accused of accepting US$1.2 million in illicit funds from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht for her electoral run.
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Peru Prosecutor: Money Laundered Through US Banks To Keiko Fujimori
Vito’s lawyer, Giuliana Loza, confirmed the resolution issued by the judge presiding over the far-reaching corruption case starring Keiko and a slew of her 2011 campaign advisors, Richard Concepcion Carhuancho. Loza says she’ll appeal the measure.
"It is a disproportionate measure, totally arbitrary," Loza told reporters on Tuesday. "There are no procedures that require Mark Vito to have to go three years without leaving the country," she added.
The national investigation, lead by the state prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez has put Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian authoritarian president, Alberto Fujimori, himself back in jail for crimes against humanity after he was temporarily pardoned, and her advisers Vicente Silva Checa, Pier Figari, Ana Herz, and Luis Mejia Lecca in preventative detention all for 36 months in connection to the embezzlement scheme.
The court order against Vito, a nationalized Peruvian from the United States, went into effect on Tuesday and expires on Nov. 26, 2021.
In international arrest warrant has been issued for two other defendants, Jaime Yoshiyama and Giancarlo Bertini in connection with the illicit Odebrecht funds to Fujimori’s 2011 campaign.
On Tuesday Perez announced he was requesting to see bank transfers from several banks based in the United States, Britain, Canada and Tokyo, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America, under the suspicion that former campaign manager Yoshiyama had his family and friends transfer nearly half a million dollars of unknown origin through these financial institutions to the coffers of Keiko’s Popular Force party in 2011.
The prosecution opened an investigation against Vito following his purchase of two properties in 2015 and 2016 using allegedly illegal funds of about $US 183,000.