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 goods experienced been loaned to her, even though she admitted to journalists that it was a “mistake” to have approved them.
Previously on Friday she faced shut-door questioning by prosecutors which lasted just about five several hours, amid allegations of illicit enrichment linked to her use of at minimum 3 Rolex watches and designer jewellery that appeared inconsistent with her modest regular monthly presidential wage of about £3,320 ($4,200).
The president’s fierce denial arrives just a 7 days following police and prosecutors battered down the doorway of her residence in a Lima suburb in a night-time raid searching for the watches. The Rolexgate scandal has embroiled her governing administration in a political disaster and forced the unpopular chief to reshuffle her cabinet after abrupt resignations.
Boluarte, 61, is considerably from staying the initial Peruvian president to be accused of corruption but the allegations have performed nothing at all to strengthen the track record of a chief accused of presiding over the killings of 49 people today by stability forces all through widespread protests about the ousting of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in December 2022. She faces a individual ongoing investigation around her function in individuals deaths.
In a televised deal with to the country, Boluarte mentioned she instructed prosecutors that the watches experienced been a mortgage from Wilfredo Oscorima, the governor of Ayacucho, a area in Peru’s southern Andes, whom she explained as a “friend” and a “brother”.
She reported all the watches except a single had been lent to her by Oscorima, who she reported had instructed her he hoped they would job a superior graphic of the nation if she wore them.
“It was an mistake to accept as a loan these watches from my pal,” she explained, incorporating she experienced previously returned all those she borrowed.
“As these watches are not my residence, I was not obliged to declare them in my declaration of assets and income,” she extra defiantly. She went on to dismiss allegations that she owned a luxurious designer bracelet and necklace, indicating the goods in issue were being costume jewellery she experienced owned for decades.
Boluarte dismissed the investigation as a “lie” and a “smoke-screen” and named on prosecutors to be much more expert, relatively than next potential customers from the “tendentious press”.
She blamed her failure to clarify the circumstance earlier on her lawyer Mateo Castañeda, who sat up coming to her at the press conference. She reported he had encouraged her not to tackle the nation till she experienced dealt with the prosecutors.
Boluarte’s late reaction to the allegations, which emerged in mid-March, may perhaps do tiny to allay scepticism. The scandal began when La Encerrona, a well known Peruvian news podcast, analysed 10,000 pictures from the presidential Flickr account, revealing what appeared to be an undisclosed collection of luxurious watches and jewelry.
The prosecutor’s workplace built no rapid comment subsequent Boluarte’s testimony.