Case Explained:This article breaks down the legal background, charges, and implications of Case Explained: How Peru’s Chronic Political Instability Enables Organized Crime – Legal Perspective
Casa de Pizarro is a stately palace overlooking Lima’s ample main square that serves as the seat of Peru’s executive branch and the official residence of its president. Yet for the best part of a decade, most residents have come and gone long before their time is up, and the instability has left the country vulnerable to organized crime.
Its most recent occupant, interim president José Jerí, left the building on February 17. He was the country’s eighth president in 10 years.
Peru’s presidents have been seemingly unmatched in their capacity for scandal over the last decade. Their list of alleged wrongdoing spans bribery and kickback schemes, contract fraud, political repression, and even attempts to rule by decree. The response has been widespread public outcry, protests, and a series of impeachments that have kept the Casa de Pizarro’s door spinning.
The country’s chronic inability to form a stable government has left Peru’s institutions feckless in the face of an alarming expansion of criminal groups. But unlike the state capture seen elsewhere in Latin America, most starkly in the former narco-coopted governments of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela or Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras, Peru’s crisis is one of generalized dysfunction rather than top-down corruption. Organized crime has not co-opted the state through violence or coercion so much as rushed into the vacuum a vacant presidency left behind.
Criminal allegations aren’t limited to the presidency. Nearly every legislator is facing investigation, with some facing multiple ones. Congress has also passed several dubious laws that seem to enable criminal activity and has strongly backed a program that facilitates illegal gold mining.
With both legislative and presidential elections set for April, Peru finds itself engulfed in a doom spiral in which criminal groups, facing minimal resistance, have expanded their operations and used their improved profits to bribe state officials, further weakening the nation’s fragile institutions.
Peru’s Revolving Door of Presidents
The country’s political spiral began in 2018 when President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned over a bribery scandal involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The resignation triggered a rapid succession of presidents: Martín Vizcarra was impeached in 2020 for allegedly accepting bribes; Manuel Merino lasted five days before resigning amid mass protests; and Francisco Sagasti served as interim until the 2021 elections.
The winner in 2021, Pedro Castillo, attempted to dissolve the legislature and rule by decree in December 2022, a move that was widely condemned and led to his arrest. Power was handed to the deeply unpopular Vice President Dina Boluarte, who was impeached by Congress in 2025. Interim president José Jerí lasted just four months before being ousted in February this year, following reports of secret meetings with Chinese businessmen linked to timber trafficking networks.
SEE ALSO: Can Peru’s New President José Jerí Win His ‘War on Crime’?
With priorities shifting every time a new president takes office, sustaining a coherent crime-fighting strategy has become impossible.
The shelf life of an interior minister who oversees public security has fallen from years to months. In the first 13 months under Castillo alone, the Interior Ministry changed hands seven times, and his successor, Boluarte, appointed seven more across her nearly three years in office.
Each new minister introduces a distinct working style and staff, with the transitions bringing confusion and paralysis.
“There’s a dead time when there’s no work, no planning, and we don’t create strategies,” said Luis Larico, a Peruvian police official. “The instability hurts us, from our decision-makers to our standard operations.”
The lack of central leadership has exacerbated the challenge of coordinating Peru’s fragmented security institutions, which count dozens of police and prosecutorial units with distinct responsibilities and jurisdictions. The siloed nature of these agencies encourages them to pass responsibility off between themselves, allowing them to avoid engaging with crimes like drug trafficking and illegal mining.
“How can you design … a strategy to combat criminality or corruption if you have no direction, no strategy, no plan?” said José Ugaz, a lawyer who previously led the Peruvian chapter of Transparency International.
Congress the Culprit
While the revolving door at the Casa de Pizarro has had direct consequences for public security, Congress has arguably done further damage. Most brazenly, the legislature has actively protected illicit economies by enacting a series of dubious reforms between 2023 and 2025. Colloquially known as the “pro-crime laws,” these have severely curtailed the investigative capacity of Peru’s Attorney General’s Office.
How Peru’s Congress Helped Dismantle the Fight Against Organized Crime
Seven laws that weakened prosecutors, shielded criminals, and eroded accountability, 2023-2025
March 2026 | Sources: InSight Crime, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Peruvian Congress records
JUN 2023 | PROSECUTION
Efficient Collaboration Law
Impact: Weakened witness cooperation
A key anti-corruption tool used to prosecute Alberto Fujimori was amended to cut the time prosecutors have to verify witness testimony, require video recording of all testimony, and expose prosecutors to criminal charges if testimony leaks.
MAY 2024 | IMPUNITY
Political Party Liability Removed
Impact: Terminated active prosecutions
The criminal code was amended to strip political parties of criminal liability, instantly terminating ongoing prosecutions for money laundering and illicit campaign funding.
JUL 2024 | INVESTIGATIONS
Search Warrant Restrictions
Impact: Tipped off suspects before raids
Defense attorneys must now be present during search warrants, eliminating the element of surprise. Suspects can destroy evidence or flee before searches are completed.
SEP 2024 | OVERSIGHT
Police Given Investigative Powers
Impact: Limited judicial independence
Preliminary criminal investigations were transferred from the Attorney General’s Office to the police, which responds to executive authority. Security experts warned officers could delay or interfere with cases involving government officials.
APR 2025 | ASSET SEIZURE
Amendment to Asset Forfeiture Law
Impact: Made the asset seizure law redundant
Peruvian authorities now require a criminal conviction before assets can be seized. The change kneecaps the law by allowing defendants to move wealth freely during prosecutions.
APR 2025 | CIVIL SOCIETY
Anti-NGO Law
Impact: Silenced watchdog organizations
NGOs are now barred from using international funds for legal action against the state, including lawsuits over rights violations, environmental harm, or constitutional claims. Violations carry steep fines or suspension, effectively silencing civil society groups that monitor corruption and organized crime.
DEC 2025 | ILLEGAL MINING
REINFO Mining Permit — 5th Extension
Impact: Shielded illegal mining networks
Congress approved the fifth extension of REINFO, a program meant to transition informal miners to legal status. Critics say it has become a shield for illegality, with organized crime using the registry to run unregulated mining fronts.
One legal amendment makes it less feasible and more perilous for prosecutors to use cooperating witnesses, whose testimonies have been instrumental in prosecuting high-profile cases. The reform gives prosecutors a very short timeframe to verify witness testimony, requires that it be recorded on video, and exposes prosecutors to criminal charges if testimony is leaked.
Congress has also moved to shield political parties and their finances from scrutiny, altering the criminal code to remove political parties from criminal liability and terminating ongoing prosecutions for money laundering and illicit campaign financing, including investigations connected to Kiki Fujimori’s 2021 presidential campaign.
SEE ALSO: Are New Laws Actually Worsening Peru’s Security Crisis?
In perhaps the most far-reaching structural change, Congress has passed a law transferring jurisdiction for preliminary criminal investigations from the Attorney General’s Office to the police. The congressional report backing the measure argued that prosecutorial oversight “restricts” police action. But security experts, prosecutors, and legal associations consulted by InSight Crime warned that officers could delay or interfere with investigations involving government officials, as the police respond to the executive branch.
“When Congress was reforming some of these institutions, it was clear they were siding with criminal groups,” said Carlos Rivera, director of Peruvian rights group the Legal Defense Institute (IDL).
“They were basically legislating for criminal groups,” Rivera added.
The reforms also restrict tools for seizing criminal assets. Congress has mandated that defense attorneys be present when security forces execute search warrants, eliminating the element of surprise and allowing suspects to destroy evidence or flee. Another change requires prosecutors to secure a criminal conviction before assets can be seized, rendering Peru’s asset forfeiture law largely redundant.
Analysts view the role of Congress in debilitating Peru’s anti-corruption edifice as a cynical ploy to protect their own corruption schemes.
“What we have are opportunists who go to Congress to see how they can enrich themselves in the shortest time possible,” said Ugaz. “This means there is no meritocracy, that we have people who arrive with a preconceived mindset of corruption. They are absolutely open to being co-opted by organized crime.”
The numbers bear him out. As of November 2025, all but three of the 130 members of Congress were in some kind of legal trouble. There were 54 under investigation, 63 facing preliminary inquiries, and 10 subject to constitutional complaints, according to the Center for Justice and International Law (Centro para la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional – CEJIL).
Gold Money Penetrates the State
The most damaging of Congress’ actions may be the repeated extension of a government program designed to combat illegal mining by transitioning small-scale and artisanal miners from the informal sector into the legal economy.
The program, called the Integral Register of Mining Formalization (Registro Integral de Formalización Minera – REINFO), grants applicants temporary legal protections against prosecution for illegal mining while they work toward full compliance with environmental, safety, and tax regulations.
The idea was to bring a sprawling informal sector into compliance, but REINFO has done the opposite. It has protected individual miners who have no intention of meeting formalization requirements, allowing them to continue mining operations indefinitely. The program also means the state is unable to seize their assets, and it has facilitated a surge in illegal mining, according to the police and industry sources.
“It’s a great form of protection, as long as you stay in the informal registration process – even though you are actually an illegal miner,” Rivera told InSight Crime.
But Congress has repeatedly approved extensions of the program, the last coming in December 2025.
SEE ALSO: Peru Massacre Exposes Mining Gangs’ Power
Criminal networks exploit programs like REINFO to expand mining operations illegally, sources told InSight Crime, securing profits that are then funneled into congressional campaigns in exchange for political favors.
“These groups have multiplied their capacity to influence politics,” said Rivera. “Almost every parliamentary bloc includes representatives of illegal miners.”
One former president of Congress, Eduardo Salhuana Cavides (2024-2025), faces at least three corruption charges stemming from his tenure as regional director of government in Madre de Dios, a hub for illicit gold extraction, and has voted for numerous bills that weaken controls on illegal mining, according to investigations by OjoPúblico.
“It’s a bit like what Pablo Escobar did, posited Ugaz, the lawyer. “First, he financed congresspeople in Colombia. Then he said: Well, why would I do that if I can go to Congress myself?”
At least 55 candidates running for Congress in the upcoming April elections have been linked to REINFO, according to an investigation by Peruvian outlet Fauna Electoral.