Peruvian Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho will continue the hearing against Keiko Fujimori, leader of Popular Force Wednesday in order to decide if the lawmaker should be held in 36 months of preventive detention.
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Opposition Leader Keiko Fujimori Detained in Money Laundering Probe
Earlier this month the 2011 presidential candidate and daughter to the former authoritarian leader of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, was detained for 10 days for allegedly receiving up to US$1.2 million from Brazil’s Odebretch construction company to fund her previous campaign. She was released Oct. 20 and put in protective custody.
State prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez is trying to place Fujimori and 10 others from her political party, Popular Force, in long-term preventative detention while the investigation into their connection to the campaign money laundering scandal takes place.
Judge Carhuancho has already heard the cases against Keiko and her advisers Pier Figari and Ana Herz, as well as Vicente Silva Checa, and Jaime Yoshiyama, former secretary general of the party.
The judge is expected to make a ruling on the preventative detention for Fujimori and Augusto Bedoya Camere, Adriana Tarazona, Carmela Paucara Paxi, Jorge Yoshiyama Sasaki, Luis Mejia Lecca and Giancarlo Bertini Vivanco who are also being investigated in connection to the Odebrectch embezzlement case.
Local media says the legal battle against Keiko may jeopardize her 2021 presidential bid.
Keiko Fujimori leads the powerful conservative opposition party Popular Force, which has a majority in Congress and was key to toppling former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski last March in a different Odebrectch graft scandal.
In early October a pardon granted to her father by Kuczynski was annulled.
Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for commanding death squads that massacred civilians in a counterinsurgency campaign during his right-wing government. He was later found guilty of crimes against humanity by an international court.