LIMA -- Peruvian ex-first lady Nadine Heredia Alarcón managed to travel to Spain after controversially being appointed director of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s liaison office at the UN in Geneva -- despite having been banned earlier in the year from leaving the country due to corruption investigations, the Perú21 news source said Wednesday.

  The Brazilian FAO director general Jose Graziano da Silva appointed Heredia despite the politician being at the heart of a massive investigation into corruption and money laundering to contribute to the Peruvian Nationalist Party’s campaigns throughout 2006 to 2011.

 Due to these accusations and investigations, the wife of the former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala was banned from leaving this South American country in June by the judge Richard Concepción Carchuancho. This ban was in effect until October and although there were demands for it to be prolonged, the appointed magistrate considered this to be unnecessary.

 Now it has been reported that Nadine Heredia travelled to Madrid as a stopover in her longer journey to Switzerland, where she will take over the role from Thursday.

 Perú21 followed Heredia’s tracks closely, publishing that an unnamed observer had seen her in a gate waiting to board an Iberia flight to Madrid at the Jorge Chávez International airport in Lima.

 “She has passed all the controls, and has had no obstacle to her departure. The immigration office has been consulted and there is nothing to block her, there is no red alert and everything went smoothly,” said the puzzled source to this Peruvian newspaper.

 Perú21 consulted the criminal lawyer Carlos Caro about the subject, who said that it is true that the ex-first lady does not have anything blocking her from leaving the country -- “this restriction expired in October.”

 However, Caro added that Heredia should have informed the judge monitoring her case about her trip, “as she is subject to the Peruvian justice system, she needs to inform the judge on the case and the public prosecutor’s office that she is travelling outside the country.”

 According to judicial sources, it appears that Heredia did in fact inform the judge Concepción Carancho about the journey. However, lawyer Caro said that if the former first lady wishes to reside abroad, she must inform the judge of this too, and in this case the judge would have to give her authorization to do so -- which he could equally decide not to do.

 Ministry sources said that the Peruvian foreign minister was not aware of the FAO’s appointment of Nadine Heredia to the important UN role.

 The foreign affairs ministry communicated with FAO director general Graziano to express their discomfort at the appointment of Heredia, and it underlined that the diplomatic immunity that Heredia would benefit from while working for the UN agency would not give her immunity from the judicial investigations being carried out into her case.

 nkd