LIMA -- Peru’s judicial authorities will decide by Sunday whether their former first lady Heredia, appointed head of the FAO’s liaison office despite legal investigations, will be sent to jail pending indictment for money laundering or not, Perú21 reported Monday.

  The ex-Peruvian first lady Nadine Heredia was called back to Peru in November from her trip to Europe, where she was meant to assume her role at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s liaison office in Geneva.

 She was called back by the judge Richard Concepción Carhuancho, in charge of the investigation into her alleged money laundering and abuse of office while her husband Ollanta Humala was in power.

 Ms Heredia arrived back in Lima Dec. 1, and assisted a hearing later that month, in which she refused to answer the questions posed to her. She was then forced to spend New Year and the Epiphany in her native Peru while waiting for a legal verdict on her situation.

 She is still awaiting a decision from the Peruvian judicial authorities as to whether to allow her to return to her role as head of the FAO’s liaison office in Switzerland, or be sent to jail pending indictment for money laundering linked to the Peruvian Nationlist Party as the prosecutor Germán Juárez requested.

 A source told the Peruvian newspaper Perú21 that the situation will be resolved in the next few days -- no later than Sunday Jan. 15.

 On Dec. 21, in a hearing at Lima’s National Appeals Chamber, judicial authorities assessed the previously failed request put forward by Nadine’s lawyer Eduardo Roy Gates for her to be able to sign the biometric check register every 30 days in the Peruvian consulate in Switzerland while working for the FAO, instead of having to be present monthly in Peru.

 They resolved to leave the decision of whether Nadine would be allowed to return to her FAO job or whether she would be sent to jail pending indictment up to a vote.

 Lawyer Roy Gates rejected the prosecution authorities’ arguments and highlighted the huge amount of media pressure surrounding Nadine’s case.

 nkd