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September 20, 2024 – 07:16
Lima, Sep 19 (EFE).- Peruvian television presenter Andrés Hurtado was arrested Thursday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police of Peru (PNP) as part of a preliminary investigation opened this week for alleged crimes of influence peddling and active bribery.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office reported on the social network X that the arrest was carried out by the Second Specialized Transitional Supreme Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Committed by Public Officials and personnel from the Division of Investigations of Highly Complex Crimes (Diviac) of the PNP.
Local media reported that the arrest warrant for Hurtado, popularly known as ‘Chibolín’, will last for seven days and was carried out at a clinic in Lima where the presenter had been admitted in recent days.
The Prosecutor’s Office announced last Monday that the Second Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Money Laundering Crimes opened a preliminary investigation against Hurtado, for which it was decided to collect his statement and commercial, financial, banking and tax information from January 2019 to August 2024.
In addition, the court ordered the receipt of statements from several witnesses and required the National Superintendence of Public Registries (Sunarp) and the Informal Property Formalization Agency (Cofopri) to report on the real estate registered in favor of the accused, in addition to other proceedings.
The preliminary investigation was opened days after the television program Cuarto Poder, on the local network América Televisión, revealed that the information in Sunarp indicates that Hurtado is the agent of the former drug lord Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, known as ‘Vaticano’.
Last week, Hurtado was linked in another television report to a case of alleged illegal gold trafficking, for allegedly having intervened on behalf of a family business to recover 100 kilos of seized gold, in exchange for a commission of one million dollars.
Another report by the Willax channel presented the testimony of an alleged collaborator of the Prosecutor’s Office who reported that the manager of the company that had recovered the gold, Iván Siucho, had met with the current ministers of Justice, Eduardo Arana, and of Development and Social Inclusion, Julio Demartini.
Demartini declared that he did not have “any friendly or commercial relationship” with Hurtado and “much less” with Siucho, while Arana asked for the dismissal of the coordinating prosecutor of the anti-corruption team, Marita Barreto, for having admitted to the collaborator that she linked him to an alleged naturalization procedure for one of the members of the Siucho family.
This Thursday, it was reported that Elizabeth Peralta, a prosecutor specializing in money laundering, was preventively removed from her position by the National Authority for Control of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, after being accused of charging illegal commissions to intervene in the case of alleged illegal gold trafficking.
Hurtado, 59, who became known in his youth as a comedian, hosted a Saturday social assistance program until two weeks ago in which he flaunted his luxurious lifestyle. EFE
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