The residence of Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, was searched just before midnight on Friday by a team of prosecutors and officers from the National Police as part of a preliminary probe opened against the president over the alleged crime of illicit enrichment.
Images broadcast by local media show how a group of officers breaks the lock on the main door of Boluarte’s home in the Surquillo district of Lima after being ignored when repeatedly knocking at the house.
The local outlets reported that the president was not at her residence and that only one of her children was present at the scene, while later one of the president’s lawyers arrived, though the Public Prosecutor’s Office had not yet issued any formal statement about the intervention.
According to the radio station RPP, the search with a view to seizure was approved by Supreme Court Judge Juan Carlos Checkley following a request from the attorney general, Juan Carlos Villena, as part of the investigation into the alleged crime of illicit enrichment in the form of omitting declarations in documents.
The Presidency of Peru and the Public Prosecutor’s Office have been at odds in recent days over the procedures launched as part of the investigation into the alleged failure to declare luxury watches owned by the president.
Last Wednesday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said visits to the president’s home and to the government palace were thwarted, while the Presidency stated that representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office were received by staff in Boluarte’s office, who were given a notification for the president.
The Supreme Prosecutor Hernán Mendoza told the Congressional Monitoring Commission that the president had “frustrated” the investigations by not attending the summons scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of that week.
Following that situation, Boluarte’s legal team asked to reschedule the investigations into the case of the undeclared luxury watches that have triggered the illicit-enrichment inquiry.
In response to this request, the attorney general commented that the president’s attitude was a “clear sign of defiance” that only delays the progress of the inquiry.
On March 18, the Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated preliminary inquiries into Boluarte over this matter, noting that the president should have declared those assets in her property register with the National Jury of Elections and the prosecutor pointed out that she did not.
Nevertheless, Boluarte stated last week that she was committed to appearing before the prosecutor to respond to the investigation and asserted that there is no patrimonial imbalance.
The N Channel television aired footage showing a large police contingency patrolling the area around the president’s home in the early hours of Saturday, while inside, agents from the Special Crimes Investigation Division and a team of prosecutors remained present.