Peruvian President Pedro Castillo accused a new “coup d’état modality”, after the prosecutor’s office constitutionally denounced him in Congress and ordered several raids for a corruption case.
The President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, assured this Tuesday that “the execution of a new form of coup d’état in Peru has begun”, after the Prosecutor’s Office filed a constitutional complaint against him in Congress and ordered raids on the home of several parliamentarians and his sister for an alleged case of corruption.
“Today, in the morning hours, the execution of a form of coup d’état has begun in Peru,” Castillo said at a conference with the foreign press in Peru.
The president gave these statements hours after the Public Ministry announced that the Attorney General of the Nation (general), Patricia Benavides, filed a constitutional complaint against Castillo in Congress for leading an alleged criminal organization in the Executive, as well as for drug trafficking. influences and complicity in an alleged case of collusion (fraud).
The president, however, “flatly” denied these accusations and rejected and condemned the work of the Prosecutor’s Office, which he accused of acting “politically”, after ordering several raids, one of them at his sister’s home.
“They are substantiating an accusation that we have never committed and we are not going to do it because we have not come for that”said.
In this sense, he declared that the “new form of coup d’état” in the Andean country “uses the Public Ministry” and “makes the country believe” that the president “leads a criminal network.”
“It has never been seen in the history of the country that the homes of officials, congressmen and former government workers are raided simultaneously, making believe with false information (…) that we are muddy,” he said.
Castillo added that “they want to legitimize a criminal network and they don’t care about the dignity of people, they don’t care about respect for families,” but he insisted that, despite “the political persecution,” his government will “maintain standing tall and firm.”
“They are not going to intimidate us, we are here stronger than ever, not only to consolidate democracy in Peru, but also to consolidate our solidarity with other communities, with other countries, because a government that is born of the people, we owe ourselves to this and we have to continue working”, he pointed out.
On the other hand, the president described as “outrageous” that “they put a vest” on detainees “innocent” people and that, instead, “they do not have the courage to do it with drug traffickers, with people who have committed crimes.
Castillo concluded his speech by reiterating his “commitment and loyalty” to continue working for the Peruvian people and was confident that he would reach the end of his term, in 2026.
Since assuming power in July 2021, the head of state has accumulated six preliminary investigations by the Prosecutor’s Office against him, five of them in the hands of prosecutor Benavides, who maintains that Castillo leads a corrupt organization in the Government to obtain profits from illicit tenders.
For this case, the prosecutor presented this Tuesday in Parliament a constitutional complaint against the president, which is now in the hands of Congress.
After learning of the presentation of this constitutional complaint, Benavides offered a statement in which he assured that, in the last proceedings carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office, “serious and revealing indications of an alleged criminal organization in the Government” were found and he denounced the existence of a “constant and ferocious obstruction of Justice” by its members.