Decision expected Tuesday on 'judicial order' for Nadine

Former first lady of Peru, Nadine Heredia, and her husband in Peruvian cartoon

 LIMA -- Peruvian judicial authorities will decide by Tuesday whether their ex-first lady Nadine Heredia will have to obtain a judicial order to be allowed to leave Peru in addition to having to return every month, writes the Peruvian newspaper Correo.

 The Peruvian Court of Appeals’ ruled Wednesday that Ms Heredia could leave this South American country to take up her job as head of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s liaison office in Geneva, so long as she returns every 30 days to sign her biometric register while she is under investigation for alleged money laundering.

 However, the Peruvian prosecutor for money laundering cases Germán Juárez Atoche asked Thursday before the judicial powers that this Peru’s former first lady Nadine Heredia and ex-President Ollanta Humala may not be allowed to leave the country without a judicial order.

 Ms Heredia and the others investigated were previously expected only to “notify” the judge if they decided to change residence, as she did before leaving to Europe to take up her role as head of the FAO’s liaison office in Switzerland.

 However, the prosecutor Juárez Atoche said that having to obtain a judicial order should just be part of the standard procedure, and asked to impose the same restrictions on the others being investigated for the money laundering case -- including Nadine’s mother Antonia Alarcón and brother Ilan Heredia.

 “It should not be allowed, your honour, that before a coercive measure that is less serious than pre-trial detention, the defendant can just inform or say to the judge ‘tomorrow I am going to Switzerland, ciao, bye, and that is it.’ That should not be allowed because it is a lack of respect to the authorities, especially when it is an investigation of this serious type, as is money laundering,” the prosecutor said in a hearing Friday to the Judge Richard Concepción Carhuancho, who is to evaluate these demands.

 If Judge Concepción Carhuancho does accept this request, then it would mean that every month when Nadine returns to Lima to sign her biometric check, she would have to attend a hearing in order for her to obtain the judicial order to leave the country again.

 “Obviously we do not agree and today we will present our reasons. Now the Public Prosecutor’s Office is trying to modify what the Court of Appeals decided through this new request. We think this is wrong,” said Nadine’s lawyer Julio Espinoza Giyena to Peruvian paper Correo.

 The lawyer added that for the moment they have not decided whether they will dispute any aspect of the court’s decision, now that first they hope to resolve this new request issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

 Her other lawyer Eduardo Roy Gates also said that he hoped the case can be resolved “without this continuous political pressure.”

 One member of congress Yeni Vilcatoma, amongst many of the same opinion, strongly reproached the Appeal Court’s “failure” in this particular case -- “Nadine Heredia should be in prison,” she said to daily newspaper Perú21.

 “I am outraged like many Peruvians, because this result will allow Ms Heredia to do whatever she wants. She has a situation that is much more advantageous than any other person being investigated,” Vilcatoma continued, referring to Nadine being allowed to leave Peru, and on top of this, she is being given diplomatic immunity.

 In the upcoming prosecutors’ commission session Tuesday, the members of congress Yonhy Lescano from the Peruvian centre-right Popular Action party, and Hernando Cevallos from the left-wing coalition Broad Left Front, will request that Ms Heredia’s secrecy of telephone communication be lifted.

  “It is to see who she has been talking to. Has she been in communication with the ministers or not? That has to do with abuse of office,” said Lescano about the ‘necessity’ of gaining access to the register of Nadine’s phone calls.

 “From the great majority of those summoned, there has been no spirit of collaboration, especially from those who had a closer relationship to Ms Heredia. We need to look for other more direct sources of information,” said Cevallos.

 Prosecution sources have said that the same request would be made concering others being investigated, Correo reports.

 nkd