The Peruvian prosecutor’s office reported on Wednesday that it summoned Lilia Paredes, wife of President Pedro Castillo, to testify in the midst of a recent investigation for alleged corruption initiated against her sister, Yenifer Paredes, and that it is added to other inquiries that include Castillo and his two nephews.
The Public Ministry specified on Twitter that the appointment to testify is on Friday. Yenifer Paredes, who is 27 years old and was raised from a young age as the couple’s daughter after the first lady’s mother died, is being investigated for alleged influence peddling.
The president’s sister-in-law was recorded ten months ago conducting a survey for a private drinking water and drainage project in a rural town in the Andes and the video was broadcast on a local television station on Sunday, for which the prosecution presumes a possible crime of influence peddling.
The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office indicated that on Tuesday they entered the presidential palace to review the visitor’s book and it was detected that there was a meeting in 2021 between the owner of the company in charge of the sanitation project and the first lady. The investigators have also summoned Yenifer Paredes for Monday the 11th and the owner of the company a day later.
Yenifer Paredes lives in the presidential palace with the president, the first lady and the couple’s two children. The crime of influence peddling is punishable by up to eight years in prison in Peru.
In the video broadcast on Sunday by América television, Paredes says that he will carry out a necessary survey as a requirement for carrying out a sanitation work in a rural town in Cajamarca, Castillo’s home region. At the moment, the role of the younger sister of Castillo’s wife in a possible corruption plot is not clear. Yenifer Paredes has remained silent.
It is not the first case in which the president’s family is under fiscal scrutiny.
Two nephews of the president —Fray Vásquez and Gian Marco Castillo— are on the run after the prosecution ordered 36 months of preventive detention against them in a corruption case that reaches the president, who is the first acting president investigated in the history of Peru.
The new attorney general Liz Benavides said last week that during the beginning of her administration that they will go “after the investigation of any criminal act, whether by the most powerful or any ordinary citizen” and commented that justice must be applied “whoever falls and despite who cares.”
