WHY were up to ten police patrol cars and dozens of officers providing round-the-clock protection at a house belonging to a convicted criminal? That is a question to which Peru’s president, Ollanta Humala, has so far been unable to provide a coherent answer. And it is one that threatens further damage to Mr Humala’s deteriorating reputation.The criminal in question is Óscar López Meneses, who was given a suspended prison sentence for helping to run a vast espionage, extortion and embezzlement racket in the 1990s for Vladimiro Montesinos. The intelligence chief under the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori, Mr Montesinos is now serving a 25-year prison sentence. When a television programme revealed Mr López’s continuing ties to the police earlier this month, the interior minister, Wilfredo Pedraza, resigned and seven senior policemen were sacked.The scandal has lapped uncomfortably close to Mr Humala, a former army officer. According to several security experts in Lima, Mr Pedraza was a largely decorative figure. The ministry was in practice run by Adrián Villafuerte, a retired colonel who served in the army with Mr Humala and acted as his security adviser. Mr Villafuerte, too, was sacked this month, despite his denial of any link to Mr López.The president has announced an investigation into “corrupt police officers” whom he blames for the protection afforded Mr...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21590937-spy-casts-shadow-president-partners-crime?fsrc=rss|ame
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