By Sovereign Hager

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

LIMA, Peru-Peru’s Vice President, Luis Giampietri is facing criminal charges for alleged irregular arms deals and faces a motion that he be removed from office. A five year investigation revealed that Giampietri was responsible for questionable arms purchases for the Peruvian Navy in 1994 and 1995.

Giampietri is a retired vice admiral in Peru’s Navy. The accusations are from the period where Giampietri was in charge of arms procurement for the Navy, when Alberto Fujimori was in office. Giampietri is accused of using his position to favor supply companies belonging to members of a corrupt network headed by then presidential security adviser Vladimiro Montesinos.

Giampietri is accused of collusion and conspiracy to commit a crime. Allegations detail how Giampietri approved purchases of military equipment from companies specifically selected by Montesinos, who then received millions of dollars in commissions in return. The money was found in his name in Switzerland. The allegedly illicit deals total 49.9 million dollars.

Giampietri denies all charges against him and insists that the arms deals did not do the state any harm, “because equipment . . . was used for national defense.” However, prosecutors are most concerned that the bidding procedure was rigged to favor companies owned by Israeli citizen Moshe Rothschild and Peruvians Enrique Benavides and Claus Corpancho.

Rothschild and Benavides have been fugitives from justice since 2001, and Corpancho has been in prison in Lima since 2007, when he was extradited from Spain. Fujimori admitted that Montesinos accepted a bribe for the sale to Peru of thirty-six MiG-29 warplanes from Belarus. Rothschild, Benavides, and Corpancho organized the sale.

The charges are the reason for the recent motion to remove Giampietri as first vice president. “We view it as improper that a person accused by a prosecutor should be acting president,” said a spokesman for the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party.

Giampietri was also a part of the trial for those responsible for the 1986 massacre committed by naval forces during a Sendero Luminoso riot. 118 people were killed. Giampietri is among those said to be responsible for the massacre.

For more information, please see:

IPS-Peru: Vice President Accused of Corruption-14 November 2009

Defense News-Peruvian Navy Officials Probed for Contract Fraud-6 November 2009

Radio Programas del Peru-Giampietri califica de “insostenible e infundada” denuncia en su contra-5 November 2009