Prosecutor's Office of Peru says that it is investigating Pedro Castillo for the alleged plagiarism of his thesis

Pedro Castillo: I was not trained to be president 2:16

(CNN Spanish) --

The Peruvian Prosecutor's Office is investigating President Pedro Castillo and his wife, Lilia Paredes, for the alleged crimes of aggravated plagiarism, generic falsehood and improper collection to the detriment of the State.

This after the complaint broadcast this Sunday by the Panorama television program in which it is stated that the president and the first lady would have plagiarized the thesis that awarded them the master's degree in 2013.

Panorama analyzed the thesis through the Turnitin anti-plagiarism program.

According to the television program, this showed a level of similarity of 54% with other national and foreign authors not cited in the academic document.

According to the conclusions of the journalistic investigation, Castillo and Paredes would have appropriated the content of other authors without citing them.

CNN has contacted the Prosecutor's Office to obtain details of whether, apart from the television report, it has other elements to open the case against Castillo.

CNN is also looking for the version of the Government Palace on the opening of the investigation.

Pedro Castillo, who before becoming president was a teacher at a primary school in Cajamarca, has a master's degree in educational psychology, according to his resume presented to the National Elections Jury during the last elections in which he won the presidency of Peru.

This was reported by CNN in June 2021.

Pedro Castillo denies "any irregular act"

On Wednesday, Castillo spoke on the Twitter of the Presidency of Peru and said that the complaint is political and part of a destabilizing plan.

He added that freedom of the press and expression lend themselves to particular and anti-democratic interests.

Castillo also said that the thesis document presented lacks legitimacy.

“I deny any irregular act.

The thesis work was validated with the respective educational quality standards,” the president said in the statement.

For her part, the first lady Lilian Paredes has not commented on the complaint.

CNN spoke with the constitutional lawyer Omar Cairo who explained that article 117 of the Constitution prohibits accusing the president except for four crimes, among which plagiarism does not appear.

“Accusing means denouncing before the Judiciary so that the president is criminally prosecuted and that is what is prohibited.

However, what is not prohibited is conducting tax investigations against the president or parliamentary investigations.

This means that both a prosecutor and a congressional investigative commission can initiate and carry out investigations into alleged crimes by the president.

If the result of these investigations leads, for example, the prosecutor to consider that he has committed a crime,

what the university says

Eduardo Pachas, Pedro Castillo's lawyer, said Wednesday night on Canal N that there is no plagiarism in the president's thesis.

Pachas implied that any responsibility would fall on the thesis advisor.

“The advisor is obliged to tell all the students, including Mr. Castillo, who was a student at the university of the master's school, how the thesis should be done, how the quotation mark should be put, How is it to be cited?

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Also in statements to Canal N, the academic vice-chancellor of the César Vallejo University, Heraclio Campana, confirmed that the thesis presented on television is legitimate.

He said that it is in the central library of the university and that it was delivered by the university itself at the request of Panorama.

• Pedro Castillo: I am not a politician.

  I wasn't trained to be president

The vice-chancellor said that the university has appointed "a research commission that will evaluate the content of the thesis in its structural aspect, in its methodological aspect, in its theoretical framework, in the sample that has been applied and in the results and conclusions of the investigation". Campana stated that the results of this investigation would be known in 15 days. He explained that, according to the university's regulations, there are sanctions that could go as far as the annulment of the degree or title obtained if any irregularity is verified.

What is Turnitin?

CNN has not been able to independently verify the results of the Panorama investigation or review Pedro Castillo's thesis.

An academic analysis published by the US National Institutes of Health (NHI) on the effectiveness of Turnitin concluded that plagiarism detection "is an academic judgment, which depends on many factors, and only academics Experts can do this job.”

Under the title “Turnitin: Is it a text matching or plagiarism detection tool?”

(something like “Turniting: Is it a word matching or plagiarism detection tool?”), the study says that that software and others like it produce “originality reports,” which are then interpreted by a person based on the significance of the findings, and their interpretation "may be complicated depending on the experience of the team member."

For example, he adds, it is not advisable to simply rely on the 38% similarity index percentage, and there must be human intervention "to rule out the facts by close inspection of each individual match."

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