Fight against Corruption in Peru: Ten Years from Fujimori

After the regime of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Peru presented an effort without precedent, at a Latin American level, in the anti-corruption fight: within Valentin Paniagua's transitional government, Peru generates an efficient anti-corruption structure which, by its strength and results, is an international reference. What happened next? From the Presidency of Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) and during the Presidency of Alan Garcia (2006-2010), the effort diluted: organize offices, national commissions and councils of high level, all of them with limited effectiveness. Why Peru did not hold the proven strategy implemented in Paniagua's administration? The experience accumulated in a decade, is the sum of discontinuous and scattered actions involving the Executive, the Legislative, the Judicial and civil society. At the same time, it is a valuable opportunity to reconstruct the events that occur in the implementation of public policies against corruption, as a sensitive issue.. Ten years from the fall of the Fujimori regime, period in which this study emphasizes, the Alan Garcia's Presidency, suffers a crisis of government generated by a corruption scandal, the "petroaudios", which led to the fall of the Cabinet of Ministers in 2008. The response of the Executive was the preparation and publication in media of the "National Plan of Fight against Corruption 2008"; a document that could be politically powerful, but limited in the public work effectiveness. Before and after the "petroaudios" scandal, in the last Peruvian presidential administration existed complaints against corruption, without an action from the existing organizational structure to suppress them, or punish them. Combating corruption is, existing item in Peru. A Multiparty Commission that will investigate the alleged cases of corruption presented during Alan Garcia's Presidency was recently approved in the Peruvian Parliament. Using the instrumental case method, and based on interviews and documentary sources, it is described what had been done in Peru to combat corruption following the fall of the Fujimori regime and for a period of ten years. The lessons that can be derived from the particular case are, for Latin American region, usable knowledge in the permanent aspiration of creating institutions that generate much more egalitarian and fair conditions. The present study was conducted in the Institute of Peru from the San Martin de Porres University, as a senior visiting researcher.