The Peruvian Prosecutor's Office investigates an alleged $ 300,000 bribe to President Martín Vizcarra

The Peruvian president, Martín Vizcarra, during a press conference at the Lima airport on October 5.ERNESTO BENAVIDES / AFP

A collaborator in the fiscal investigations

, as they call some thirty companies that conspired between 2002 and 2016 to distribute public works tenders, has delivered evidence of a bribe of $ 300,000 in 2014 to President Martín Vizcarra, when he was governor of Moquegua, the Peruvian press has revealed.

The bribery, according to the testimony of the investigated, was in exchange for privileged information that Vizcarra allegedly delivered so that the construction company Obrainsa, and its Italian partner Astaldi, could win the tender for the Lomas de Ilo irrigation work, a competition administered by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

It is a common practice in the Peruvian public administration to delegate to international entities the execution and management of works tenders.

The strategy has restricted access to information on these processes, because they are not met by the transparency requirements of the State Procurement Law.

Vizcarra was regional governor of Moquegua between 2011 and 2014. The Attorney General's Office noted in 2017 that 67 regional governors and former governors were under investigation for events that occurred since 2013, including the current president.

"Organizing the president is serious and must be investigated," former Ombudsman Eduardo Vega tells EL PAÍS, who in 2017 led a study on corruption in public works in five regions of the country, including Moquegua.

According to the information of the judicial collaborator, in 2013 the manager of Obrainsa, Elard Tejada, presented an economic proposal to UNOPS for the irrigation work, but in early October the entity asked him to modify the budget.

Always in accordance with that testimony, the businessman telephoned the then regional governor of Moquegua, Vizcarra, and he told him that he could give him information that had not been disclosed: the budget that the Regional Government had for that tender.

In return he asked for a "commission" of 2% of the work.

The now president also reportedly said that UNOPS informed him of the results of the proposal "before making the award, so that he can express his no objection," reported the newspaper

.

The manager of the construction company Obrainsa has been on the run for two years and last Friday a judge issued the arrest warrant against him for house arrest.

The companies of Tejada and Vizcarra worked together in consortium when they won the tender for a millionaire public works in 2003 in Arequipa.

The testimony obtained by the Prosecutor's Office indicates that the manager of the construction company paid the bribe to the then regional governor, in cash and in two parts, at the company's headquarters in Lima, in January and April 2004. The Prosecutor's Office has received as evidence copies of the checks to pay the bribe and various emails.

According to the judicial account of the repentant, another part of the bribe was paid, at the request of Vizcarra, by renting a plane to transfer Bolivian officials from Lima to Moquegua, with whom the politician needed to meet.

The request to the construction company to take the flight "on account of the agreement" occurred in December 2013, before the award of the tender.

On Sunday night, the Peruvian president indicated in a television program that he did not visit the construction company Obrainsa on the specified dates.

"I have been in technical meetings when the work was already awarded because it was important," he declared.

In addition, the president explained that if Obrainsa paid the cost of the flight it was as an action of "corporate responsibility", since Bolivian officials were interested in using the port of Ilo for exports.

“I categorically reject.

In all my life I have not been indignant as I am now, ”said the head of state on the television program Panorama.

The Republic

also reports this Monday that executives of two other companies have offered the Public Ministry evidence of illegal payments to Vizcarra when he was a regional authority.

One is the Peruvian construction company ICCGSA and the other is the Ecuadorian CASA.

Former anti-corruption attorney César Azabache commented on a radio station that to corroborate Vizcarra's version of “technical meetings” there would have to be documentation from the Regional Government that supports them.

In addition, he said that it would be enough for the prosecution to collect information from mobile phone calls to confirm the words of the repentant.