Thursday 6th September 2018
We appear to have had a coup yesterday, but few have noticed.
7th July 2018. News Agency IDL-Reports began the release of a series of audio tape compromising staff and workers of the CNM, National Magistrates Council and judges apparently .
For months there has been a steady release of taped phone conversations in the press. The CNM audios feature various lawyers, judges, businessmen, politicians and fiscals (prosecutors) trading privileges.
The taping had been ordered by prosecutors investigating a drug-running mafia in the port here, Callao.
A senior judge in the port of Callao was on the end of many calls from the mafia, so they bugged the judge. He is heard on the tapes asking someone accused of raping an eleven year old if he wanted to be found not guilty or get a reduced sentence. The judge is Cesar Hinostroza, who was President of the High Court in Callao.
Others tapes record him arranging a meeting with a politican to discuss who to elect as the top prosecutor.
Later we hear him asking a businessman if he could get tickets to the world cup for him and his wife, from the President of the Peruvian Football Federation,
The President of the Peruvian Football Federation is Edwin Oviedo, who is investigation for leading a gang dedicated to extortion and assassination in the Tumán sugar works In Lambayeque. Two union leaders in the workforce were assassinated, allegedly on Ovideo’s orders, in 2012 and 2015.
who was the manager of a sugar factory being investigated for the murder of workers who were trying to organise a strike.
The manager was paying several thousand soles a month to another judge to keep his case out of court.
The sugar factory is owned by the brother of the Congressman who was seeking to arrange the appointment of the next President of the Court.
The congressman is the spokesman for the FP, the party led by the daughter of the disgraced dictator.
The daughter’s brother was also a leading politician in congress, until his sister had him suspended for trading votes to save the former President from removal, in return for
granting a release “on medical grounds” to the former Dictator.
Because the daughter wanted to keep her father in jail.
Which trading was revealed by another FP Congressman, Moses Mamani, who secretly taped meetings with the brother and representatives of the president.
That congressman runs a network of 32 companies with unexplained assets of 7 million soles and has been under investigation for two years.
The tapes revealed a network of corruption involving members of the CNM, the National Council of Magistrates, office administrators in Callao who processed the paperwork, senior judges and through to the businessmen and politicians who paid for services. These services could include delaying or archiving cases, reduced sentences or not guilty findings. Cesar Hinostraza, for example, is revealed on tape talking to the alleged rapist of an eleven year old girl.
To date, 11 people from the Cuellos Blancos of the port have been put behind bars for three years (they may face trial at some indeterminate date in the future), and the President insisted that the Congress, majority controlled by Fuerza Popular in Alliance with Apra, shut down the CNM for 60 days as an emergency measure. He could pressure them like this because of the wave of popular support and marches asking for whole of Congress to be removed.
In the middle of all this, the previous chief investigator was replaced at the end of his term by Pedro Chavarry. To enable this, the CNM changed his marks on a formal evaluation so that he qualified for promotion. His academic qualifications include a Masters in Penal Law at a Peruvian University where 292 of the 356 paragraphs were copied from another source without referencing. After two years investigation by other fiscals the case was archived.
In the 1990s Chavarry was the defence lawyer for an arms dealer working with Vladimir Montesinos, dictator Fujimori’s right hand man, Keiko Fujimori’s Uncle Vlad.
The new Fiscal has to be elected by the five members of the Junta de Fiscales Supremos. Two abstained, and three voted for Chavarry on 7th June for him to hold the post from 2018 to 2021. One of the three was Chavarry himself, whose taped conversations with former Callao judge Cesar Hinostraza had already been aired.
The other two judges supporting Chavarry, Rodríguez Monteza and Gálvez Villegas, had also been taped having questionable conversations with Hinostraza in the CNM.
The Fiscal, the Chief Prosecutor, the man who decides what cases to prioritise and what judges will consider them, like the Lord Chancellor, was identified as part of a criminal gang, the Cuellos Blancos del Puerto, the White Collars of the Port. who have taken over the court system and worked with businessmen and the main political party to get some people off and find others guilty. The network involves dozens of court workers, magistrates, starting in the Port, from where all the cocaine is shipped, and eventually rigging elections and appointments until they took over the National Council of Magistrates, which handles all the appointments and promotions, and then choosing their own man for Chief Prosecutor.
The Fiscal invited all the national prosecutors to sign a letter of support and they refused, signing their own statement deploring corruption. So he sacked or transferred 23 of them the following day. The College of Lawyers, the
In his few weeks in office Chavarry has
On Monday Chavarry called a meeting of all 33 regional fiscals and presented them with a motion supporting him. Only three were willing to sign. The fiscals unanimously signed a declaration against the continuing corruption in the judiciary.
On Wednesday, yesterday, Chavarry sacked, moved or accepted the resignation of 43 fiscals.
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The rescheduled hearing on Wednesday morning Fiscal Domingo Perez revealed that the raid on the house of Vicente Silva Checa had discovered private court papers on all the main building projects from the Odebrecht investigation being conducted in Congress by an FP dominated Lava Jato Commission.
Protected witness no 2017-55-4 said Vicente Silva Checa was the central adviser, while Checa himself denied it. A tweet circulated showing a still from the evening news with the image of Vicente Silva Checa subtitled “Advisor to Keiko Fujimori” and the running commentary on the interview saying ” I am not an Advisor to Keiko Fujimori”.