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Peru's Former President Denies Having Foreign Bank Accounts
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori on Tuesday denied the report that he has any bank accounts outside Peru, and said he did not really receive 12.5 million US dollars in donations from Japan in 1990, but 12.5 million Japanese yen, or some 90,000 dollars at that year's exchange rate.
Fujimori was accused of illegally holding that amount by his ex- wife and current political enemy Susana Hisushi, who declared to the press that she got this information from Peru's attorney general's office.
Meanwhile, Hisushi said Tuesday that she planned to go to Japan to hunt down the bank accounts in which she says he stashed 12.5 million dollars in charity donations for Peru's poor.
In a letter addressed to a local news broadcast station, Fujimori said these donations were used to upgrade a public school from a poor neighborhood in Lima "as wished by donors."
"There is an irrefutable sign visible to anyone who wishes to prove it: the Peru-Kawachi 3095 Education Center (formerly known as Acombamba) located in the municipality of Chillon in Puente Piedra," Fujimori said.
After reiterating that these donations were deposited in an account in the name of the philanthropic foundation "Peru no Kodomo no Nikin," Fujimori challenged his detractors "to show the opposite, for I never transferred any sum to any personal account. "
"I don't have any bank account outside Peru, as proved in Switzerland, for instance. My only accounts are already of public knowledge: in the Continental Bank and in the National Bank of Peru," he added.
Finally, the former president said he hopes "all the investigations on bank accounts continue to reach conclusions revealing its falsity."
Currently, Fujimori only faces the judicial process in Peru for dereliction of duty due to his abrupt resignation from the presidency while on a secret trip to Japan last year.
Amid a snowballing corruption scandal, Fujimori fled to Japan last November and since then, prosecutors and congressmen have tried to prove his presumed participation in the corruption network of his former advisor and ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.
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