Peru Lawmakers Start Impeachment Proceedings Against President

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Lawmakers in Peru have initiated impeachment proceedings against President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski over alleged corruption. Opposition lawmakers filed the motion against the president Friday, saying he was morally unfit to lead the country after he resisted calls to resign over the alleged corruption. Twenty-seven of 130 members of Peru's Congress approved launching the process to oust the president during a special session Friday. Kuczynski vowed to fight on and not resign during a televised speech just before midnight on Thursday. He denied there was anything improper in his consulting business receiving previously undisclosed payments more than 10 years ago from the company at the center of the country's biggest corruption scandal. Kuczynski said he had no management duties in his consulting firm when it received nearly $800,000 from scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht. The president denied as recently as last month to having any links to Odebrecht. Odebrecht has shaken the politics across Latin America with its confession last year as part of a leniency deal that it gave kickbacks to officials in a dozen countries for more than a decade. Peru's opposition lawmakers control more than half of the votes in the country's Congress, whose president, Luis Galarreta, said a vote could take place as soon as next week.
December 15, 2017 at 06:03PM