Peru's Ex-President Dies in Suicide as Police Raid His Home Updated on April 17, 2019, 4:53 PM EDT
• Alan Garcia led country twice before becoming mired in scandal
• Suspected of taking bribe from construction giant Odebrecht
Former Peru President Alan Garcia’s suicide with police at his door Wednesday was a deadly turn in an aggressive continental corruption probe that has ensnared four of the nation’s former leaders.
The dramatic death of the longtime leftist underscores the scope of the Odebrecht affair, which has spawned bribery probes across Latin America and destabilized governments, above all in Peru. The Andean nation has endured grinding poverty and a stubborn Maoist insurgency. Its reckoning with graft at the highest levels could continue decades of dysfunction, or be a long first step toward cleaning up its government.
Garcia, a towering 69-year-old nicknamed Crazy Horse, served as president twice, living in exile between his administrations after accusations of graft. He returned only after the statute of limitations expired. On Wednesday, he was facing the prospect of prison for the first time.
“President Garcia made the decision of a free man,’’ Mauricio Mulder, a lawmaker with Garcia’s Apra party, told reporters outside Casimiro Ulloa hospital. “For we Apristas, who are his family, it’s an act of dignity and honor in the face of a fascist, sick, persecution.’’
President Martin Vizcarra, whom Garcia had blamed for the investigations, confirmed his death in a tweet. “My condolences to his family and loved ones,” he wrote.
Garcia was Peru’s president between 1985 and 1990 and again from 2006 to 2011. A populist, he presided over an economic collapse in his first term before embracing free-market policies in his second term, and the country enjoyed rapid growth. But he was swept up in the Odebrecht scandal and investigators believed he had been bought off by the Brazilian construction giant.
Garcia unsuccessfully sought asylum in the Uruguayan Embassy in November after a court barred him from leaving the country for 18 months during the investigation of a rail contract Odebrecht won during his second administration.
“I never asked for money or sold public works,” he said Tuesday on Twitter. “Those who accused me are the true corrupt. I believe in history. Others sell themselves, not me.”
This next day, prosecutors and police came to his Lima home. Garcia went into his bedroom on the second floor, saying he was going to call his lawyer, said Interior Minister Carlos Moran. A few minutes later a shot was heard.
Probes into campaign donations and bribes Odebrecht paid have embroiled the country’s executive and stalled major infrastructure projects, slowing its economy. The investigation, dubbed Operation Carwash, started in Brazil and has also ensnared members of the business and political elite in that nation, the region’s biggest economy. Michel Temer last month became the second former Brazilian president to be arrested as part of Carwash.
The company has admitted to bribing officials across Latin America and in 2016 agreed to pay the largest corruption penalty ever levied by global authorities. The scandal dealt a heavy blow to impunity that prevailed in the region for so long, said Thomaz Favaro, a Sao-Paulo based director at Control Risks, a consulting firm. Peru’s iteration of the Odebrecht probe may gone deeper than that of any other nation, he said.
Authorities there have barred former President Ollanta Humala from leaving the country, and the government is seeking the extradition of former President Alejandro Toledo from the U.S. A court last week ordered the detention of former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for 10 days. Prosecutors have requested a separate court order to jail Kuczynski for 36 months as they prepare laundering charges. He has denied wrongdoing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-17/former-president-of-peru-shoots-self-in-head-as-police-close-in