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Peruvian prosecutors and police raided this Saturday the homes of officials investigated for alleged irregularities in the hiring of a singer, case by which Congress seeks to remove President Martín Vizcarra, reported the Prosecutor’s Office.
The searches were carried out in “eight properties of those investigated and witnesses in the case of the alleged irregularities in the hiring of Richard Cisneros Carballido, as a supplier to the Ministry of Culture,” the Public Ministry said in a statement.
Congress on Friday approved the impeachment of Vizcarra for “moral incapacity”, accused of instigating his collaborators to lie about the singer’s hiring.
One of the registered houses is that of the secretary general of the Peruvian presidency and personal assistant to Vizcarra, Miriam Morales, the official closest to the president investigated in this case.
The home of an assistant to the presidential office, Karem Roca, was also searched.
Both Morales and Roca are key figures in some controversial secretly recorded audios in which Vizcarra is heard talking about the scandal and inciting them to lie.
These audios are the basis of the accusation by which Congress initiated a process that could lead to the removal of Vizcarra on September 18, when the 130 legislators vote.
The provincial prosecutor Janny Sánchez Porturas is in charge of the investigations, which involve 14 people.
All of them are investigated for the crimes of aggravated collusion and incompatible negotiation against the State, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The residence of the protagonist of the scandal, Richard Cisneros, as well as the houses of five officials of the Ministry of Culture, who hired the singer between 2018 and 2020 for an amount of 175,400 soles (about $ 50,000), was also searched for documents.
Vizcarra has denied having intervened in the hiring of the singer, whom he said he met during the 2016 election campaign, in which he was a vice-president candidate as a partner of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who won the elections and resigned in March 2018.
The president, who replaced Kuczynski, has asked for the case to be investigated, but has denounced that Congress is using the scandal as part of a “political plot” to remove him from power.
Congress has been investigating the case for about three months, when the press revealed the contracts to the singer.
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