Keiko fighting for her freedom and her party
LIMA: Peru opposition leader Keiko Fujimori’s long-cherished presidential ambitions hung in the balance Thursday as a court moved closer to deciding whether to jail her pending the outcome of a corruption probe.
The 43-year-old daughter of disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori has been forced to defend herself against accusations she accepted more than a million dollars in illicit party funding from Brazilian corporate giant Odebrecht.
The judge, Richard Concepcion Carhuancho, has to decide whether to accede to anticorruption prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez’s request that she be placed in preventive detention for a 36-month period while an investigation against her continues.
Perez alleges Keiko Fujimori received more than US$1.2 million from Odebrecht for her 2011 presidential campaign, which she denies.
While her lawyer Giuliana Loza fought on Thursday to keep her out of jail, Keiko found herself in a fight to recover control of her powerful political party, Popular Force, which has been riven by an internal crisis in recent days.
Peru remains transfixed by the Fujimori saga and the media has gorged on the spectacle. — AFP