A Judge on Tuesday dismissed a prosecutor’s request to take Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori back into pre-trial custody, radio station RPP reported.

Judge Victor Zuniga Urday told Fujimori to adhere to the conditions of her bail in future. The public prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that it would appeal the decision.

The right-wing populist politician, who set to narrowly lose the presidential election to hard-left candidate Pedro Castillo, had violated the conditions of her release from preventive custody in an ongoing corruption trial.

The prosecutors said earlier this month as they called for her detention.

Fujimori, who was being investigated for money laundering and obstructing the course of justice, was not allowed to contact witnesses or co-defendants as part of her bail conditions.

Prosecutors said she violated those terms when she appeared in public with former lawmaker and lawyer Miguel Angel Torres and with the former leader of the Christian People’s Party, Lourdes Flores Nano, at a rally.

The powerful opposition leader, who was the daughter of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, was alleged to have headed a criminal network to launder illicit funds that the corruption-tarnished Brazilian construction company Odebrecht contributed to her 2011 presidential election campaign.

She had already been remanded in custody several times in recent years on corruption charges and spent more than a year in custody up until November 2019.

An unconfirmed count had Castillo ahead of Fujimori by some 44,000 votes in the presidential election, though two weeks after Peruvians cast their ballots the electoral office has not yet been declared.

Any candidate can be the winner, and some electoral lists with irregularities were under review. (dpa/NAN)

– June 22, 2021 @ 11:47 GMT|