the former president who once enjoyed 80% approval, will follow the route of almost all the men who have held power in Peru in the last 40 years: prison. The Judiciary sentenced him this Wednesday to 14 years in prison for having received 2.3 million soles ($680,000) in bribes from two construction companies (Obrainsa and ICCGSA) in exchange for favoring them in the awarding of the Lomas de Ilo projects and the remodeling of the Moquegua Hospital when he was governor of that region, located in the south of the country.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the corruption pact was conceived in 2013. The revelation of this case was the trigger for Vizcarra to be vacated due to permanent moral incapacity in November 2020 after 32 months in office. Vizcarra had taken over from the economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and achieved a peak of popularity in 2019 by dissolving Congress, but then his reputation went into free fall for having carried out the largest vaccine trafficking on the continent during the pandemic. He secretly got vaccinated and allowed almost 500 people from the wealthiest spheres to do so as well, while Peru led the highest rate of coronavirus deaths in the world.
He Get vaccinated During the five years that the investigation lasted, former directors of the Obrainsa consortium confessed that they paid one million soles (almost 300,000 dollars) to Vizcarra to win the award of Lomas de Ilo, an ambitious irrigation project. In turn, senior officials of the company Ingenieros Civiles y Contratistas Generales SA (ICCGSA) underwent a process of effective collaboration with the justice system and also acknowledged having disbursed one million three hundred thousand soles (385,000 dollars) to Vizcarra to obtain the tender for the expansion of the Moquegua Hospital.
During the reading of the sentence, in the presence of the former president, the court determined the “credibility and coherence” of said testimonies. What’s more, they stressed that it could not be demonstrated that there was any trace of hatred or enmity that would diminish their reliability. And that the modus operandi of bribery does fit in accordance with the expert reports carried out by the Police. Obrainsa directors reported that they had delivered the bribe in Manila envelopes in the highest denomination bill: 200 soles ($59).
Martín Vizcarra’s defense has repeated from the beginning that these incriminations are false and that there is no video, photograph or audio that proves that his client benefited from ill-gotten money. On Monday, in an interview with the weekly Hildebrandtthe civil engineer once again denied the accusations, and maintained that it is all a “mafioso pact” that seeks to remove him from the political scene. The Lizardas his adversaries call him, intended to run as vice president in the 2026 general elections under the umbrella of his brother Mario Vizcarra, from the Peru Primero group, but the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) excluded him from the race due to a disqualification that weighs on him to hold public office.
“They may exclude me from the process, but not from the hearts of Peruvians. They are not going to break us,” he said that time through his social networks, a terrain he knows well. Vizcarra is recognized for his ability to capitalize on his troubles with the law and gain the sympathy of youth on digital platforms. His popularity exploded, thanks to small clips and live broadcasts, where he performs everyday activities. A simple formula that other politicians did not know how to execute.
At 62 years old, Martín Vizcarra has been convicted in the first instance for the crime of passive bribery. His defense has assured that he will appeal. But in the meantime he will serve his sentence in Barbadillo, the unusual prison for former presidents east of Lima, in the district of Ate. He will be a cellmate of Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala and Pedro Castillo. A few months ago he was held there, but it was only a few weeks. He was placed in preventive detention due to flight risk. He was even transferred to a prison for common prisoners, but the ruling was finally overturned. A prelude to what his life will be like from now on.
Martín Vizcarra is the fifth former president who will spend several seasons in Barbadillo. The first was Alberto Fujimori. He would be released from prison at the age of 76 in 2039. The ‘Lizard’ was the congressman with the most votes in 2021, with more than 165 thousand votes. But, after being disqualified, he had to give up his seat to a thirty-something lawyer who was waiting for his place on the substitute bench. José Jerí, the man who governs Peru through a butterfly effect.
