Kenji Fujimori, brother of three-time Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, has accused the party that she leads, Fuerza Popular, of having brought him «with bad intentions» before the judicial process for which he is facing 12 years in prison for a vote-buying case known as ‘Mamanivideos’.
The second of former president Alberto Fujimori’s sons has assured that he has not been a member of the Popular Force since 2021, the year in which his term as congressman ended, and that he has no intention of returning to this party «that has brought him before the courts with bad tricks,» he said.
«It is so much damage and pain that has caused me the passage through politics that I feel totally disappointed, disillusioned and I do not want to know anything about politics,» he said in his closing argument in the trial that elucidates his participation in the purchase of votes to avoid the motion of censure of former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
«You cannot imagine the pain caused to my family, my wife, my daughter, my parents…. But this process made my mother Susana especially sick, because since 2018 she was by my side during the sessions in which I participated and I could see how little by little her health was deteriorating,» she has complained.
Fujimori has accused Fuerza Popular of having tried to turn him into a «political eunuch» during the four years he was in Congress, enough time in which, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, he led a plot of vote buying and influence peddling to avoid Kuczynski’s dismissal.
The Public Prosecutor’s accusation is based on videos recorded by Moisés Mamani, also a congressman of the Popular Force, in which Kenji Fujimori and several of his party associates are seen offering him favorable treatment in their projects in exchange for his vote against Kuczynski’s dismissal.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office is asking for twelve years in prison for him, as well as his disqualification from holding public office and the payment of 130,000 soles (approximately 33,600 euros), according to the Peruvian newspaper ‘La República’.
Former president Kuczynski resigned on March 23, 2018, days before Congress voted for his impeachment, due to journalistic reports linking him to the Odebrecht corruption scandal.
After Brazil, Peru is the country where the Brazilian construction company scandal has gained the most traction. In addition to Kuczynski, the country’s last presidents, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala, are under investigation for their alleged links to the scheme, while Alan García committed suicide in 2019 when he was about to be arrested by the Police.
