Supreme Prosecutor Zoraida Avalos
Lima, Jun 22 (RHC) The Peruvian Parliament accused Supreme Prosecutor Zoraida Avalos of various crimes and banned her from holding public office for five years for freezing an investigation of Pedro Castillo when he was president.
The plenary congress approved disqualifying Ávalos from the exercise of public functions during that period and placed her at the disposal of the Public Prosecutor's Office, accusing her of the crimes of omission, refusal, or delay of functional acts.
The decision was adopted in two separate votes, with a majority of 71 votes for the disqualification and 73 votes for the criminal accusation, out of a total of 130 congressmen.
According to the majority of the legislators as Attorney General, Ávalos committed crimes when at the beginning of 2022 she opened a preliminary investigation for alleged corruption to the then governor Castillo and immediately froze it until the end of his mandate.
For this decision, she invoked a constitutional article that grants immunity to presidents until the end of their term and the precedent that, in similar situations, all her predecessors refrained from investigating presidents for the same reason.
In her plea before the plenary, Avalos referred to the fact that the current conservative congresswoman Gladys Echaiz, when she was also the prosecutor of the Nation under the government of the neoliberal Alan Garcia (2006-2011), filed a request to the president, invoking the presidential immunity.
The prosecutor also argued that by opening the investigation against Castillo she opened the way for the investigation and by suspending it she complied with the constitutional mandate that grants her immunity and added that her legal acts are not legally subject to sanction.
In June 2022, Patricia Benavides, pointed out by parliamentarians, jurists, and progressive communicators as a member of the conservative congressional majority, assumed the office of Attorney General of the Nation and intensified the investigations against Castillo, which he denounced as part of a political conspiracy against him (Source: Prensa Latina).
