The Peruvian Justice prohibits Vizcarra from leaving the country for the next 18 months

The President of Peru, Martín Vizcarra

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The Judicial Power of Peru has prohibited this Friday the now former president of Peru Martín Vizcarra from leaving the country for the next 18 months after the motion of censure against him and while the causes of corruption opened in his against.

In a statement, the Peruvian Justice has agreed to the request of the prosecutor Germán Juárez Atoche, a member of the special team on the Lava Jato case and has issued precautionary measures against the ex-president, accused of being behind a network of bribes related to projects of construction in Moquegua when he was governor of that region.

This measure will be applied until May 12, 2022, according to information from the newspaper El Comercio. Judge María de los Ángeles Álvarez has affirmed that at the level of preliminary proceedings, the elements of conviction are sufficiently supported to request that their departure from the country be prohibited. Thus, it has relied on the existence of a flight risk and the fact that Vizcarra has sufficient income to leave the country.

Vizcarra successfully faced a first vote of no confidence last September after being accused of an alleged crime of influence peddling within the so-called Richard Swing case, but this time he has not obtained the support of Congress.

The motion of censure, which at first did not seem to be going ahead, came after three aspiring collaborators of the Lava Jato special team, including a former senior official at Obrainsa linked to the Brazilian Odebrecht affirmed that Vizcarra would have received from this company about 550,000 euros in bribes in exchange for an irrigation project in 2013, and a series of public contracts for the construction of a hospital.

These accusations are part of the investigation of the so-called Construction Club case, a consortium of companies that since 2001 have been bribing public officials to obtain contracts throughout the country.