Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski faces impeachment on Thursday for allegedly accepting bribes over a decade ago when he served as the country’s finance minister and later its prime minister.
Kuczynski is the latest Latin American leader to be engulfed in a wave of corruption investigations stemming from the largest bribery scandal in modern history.
Kuczynski, backed by his lawyers, defended himself before Congress on Thursday, making a forceful case for his innocence. In a radio interview the 79-year-old insisted he wouldn’t be removed from office.
“Congress isn’t going to remove me, they don’t have the 87 votes,” required for impeachment, Kuczynski told Colombia’s Blu Radio on Thursday morning. And in a defiant speech to Congress he said, “I’m here to show my face because I have nothing to hide,” according to a tweet posted on his account.
Company at center of Brazil corruption scandal
Lawmakers were expected to debate for at least four hours and then hold a motion on whether to impeach Kuczynski later Thursday, according to Peru’s state-run news agency.
For impeachment to pass, 87 of the 130 congressional leaders — two-thirds — must vote in favor. Last week, lawmakers voted 93-17 in favor of holding Thursday’s hearing. If Kuczynski is removed, Vice President Martin Vizcarra would assume the presidency.
Opposition lawmakers recently revealed $782,000 in previously undisclosed payments from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht to Kuczynski’s two consulting firms between 2004 and 2006 when he was Peru’s finance minister and prime minister.
Odebrecht continued paying advisory fees to the firms, Westfield Capital and First Capital, until 2012, well after Kuczynski left public office and before his presidential campaign in 2016. In total, Odebrecht paid Kuczynski’s firms $4.8 million in advisory fees from 2004 and 2012.
Kuczynski has acknowledged his firms accepted the payments but says he did nothing illegal.
Kuczynski joins two other recent Peruvian Presidents, Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo, accused of accepting bribes from Odebrecht. Toledo and Humala deny any wrongdoing.
Odebrecht also says its payments to Kuczynski weren’t illegal. It says its contracts with the firms were exclusively managed by Chilean businessman Gerardo Sepulveda, Kuczynski’s partner at the firms.
But that may be a tough argument for lawmakers to buy. Odebrecht was at the center of Brazil’s unprecedented corruption scandal, which partly triggered the longest recession in the country’s history. The recession ended this year but unemployment remains very high at about 12.4%.
In December 2016, the US Justice Department hit Odebrecht with $3.5 billion record fine for dolling out bribes to officials across Latin America and beyond.
Several Latin American prosecutors have opened investigations into Odebrecht in their respective countries. In a plea agreement, Odebrecht admitted giving nearly $800 million in bribes to leaders and individuals in order to get contracts for construction projects.
Latin America’s star faces corruption scandal
Peru’s corruption crisis could mark a turn of fortunes for one of the region’s star economies. Peru has led Latin America in growth the last two years, and in 2015 the International Monetary Fund put Peru on the world stage by hosting its annual meeting in the country’s capital, Lima. It was the first time in 50 years the IMF hosted its meeting anywhere in Latin America.
For now, economists don’t expect Peru to go off the rails if Kuczynski is impeached like Brazil’s economy did while former President Dilma Rousseff went through her impeachment process for allegedly messing with Brazil’s budget to hide gaps.
But like Brazil, experts say, Peru faces one major variable: How deep does the corruption run in Peru’s leadership ranks? Brazil’s infamous “car wash” investigation sent dozens of high-ranking lawmakers to jail.
“It’s unclear at this stage how big this becomes,” said Neil Shearing, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, a research firm.
“It’s much more difficult for the government to get its agenda through congress,” amid a corruption scandal.
