Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, has dismissed an investigation into her use of luxurious watches as a “smoke-screen”, denying wrongdoing and saying that the objects had been loaned to her, although she admitted to journalists that it was a “mistake” to have accepted them.
Earlier on Friday she confronted closed-door questioning by prosecutors which lasted practically 5 hours, amid allegations of illicit enrichment linked to her use of no less than three Rolex watches and designer jewelry that appeared inconsistent along with her modest month-to-month presidential wage of about £3,320 ($4,200).
The president’s fierce denial comes only a week after police and prosecutors battered down the door of her house in a Lima suburb in a night-time raid looking for the watches. The Rolexgate scandal has embroiled her authorities in a political disaster and compelled the unpopular chief to reshuffle her cupboard after abrupt resignations.
Boluarte, 61, is way from being the primary Peruvian president to be accused of corruption however the allegations have completed nothing to enhance the popularity of a frontrunner accused of presiding over the killings of 49 individuals by safety forces throughout widespread protests over the ousting of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in December 2022. She faces a separate ongoing investigation over her position in these deaths.
In a televised handle to the nation, Boluarte mentioned she advised prosecutors that the watches had been a mortgage from Wilfredo Oscorima, the governor of Ayacucho, a area in Peru’s southern Andes, whom she described as a “pal” and a “brother”.
She mentioned all of the watches besides one had been lent to her by Oscorima, who she mentioned had advised her he hoped they’d challenge a great picture of the nation if she wore them.
“It was an error to simply accept as a mortgage these watches from my pal,” she mentioned, including she had already returned these she borrowed.
“As these watches are usually not my property, I used to be not obliged to declare them in my declaration of property and earnings,” she added defiantly. She went on to dismiss allegations that she owned a luxurious designer bracelet and necklace, saying the objects in query had been costume jewelry she had owned for years.
Boluarte dismissed the investigation as a “lie” and a “smoke-screen” and referred to as on prosecutors to be extra skilled, moderately than following leads from the “tendentious press”.
She blamed her failure to make clear the state of affairs earlier on her lawyer Mateo Castañeda, who sat subsequent to her on the press convention. She mentioned he had suggested her to not handle the nation till she had handled the prosecutors.
Boluarte’s late response to the allegations, which emerged in mid-March, might do little to allay scepticism. The scandal started when La Encerrona, a well-liked Peruvian information podcast, analysed 10,000 photographs from the presidential Flickr account, revealing what seemed to be an undisclosed assortment of luxurious watches and jewelry.
The prosecutor’s workplace made no rapid remark following Boluarte’s testimony.
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