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Peru’s interim president has been forced out of office in an “express impeachment” after a political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.
Lawmakers voted by 75 votes to 24 to proceed with the impeachment of José Jerí, who had been at the helm for just four months.
He had become embroiled in a scandal dubbed “Chifagate” after security-camera footage emerged showing him in clandestine meetings with Chinese businessmen outside of his official agenda, including one visit in which he appears to try to conceal his identity with a hooded top.
Jerí, 39, was Peru’s eight president since 2016 amid oustings, resignations and interim terms, in an unprecedented period of political instability.
The acting speaker of Peru’s congress, Fernando Rospigliosi, said lawmakers would vote on Wednesday to decide who would replace Jerí just months before the country’s presidential elections in April.
Jerí was initially popular but his approval rating collapsed amid the Chifagate controversy and other scandals.
Political parties that had backed him began to call for him to quit, seeking to distance themselves as election campaigning got under way.
Prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into alleged influence-peddling linked to the meetings with Yang Zhizua, known as “Johnny”, a well-connected Chinese businessman who has lived in Peru for decades.
Prosecutors say another Chinese citizen, Ji Wu Xiaodong, who was present at one of the meetings, is accused of belonging to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia and had been placed under house arrest for two years.
Jerí also faces scrutiny for allegedly hiring unqualified young women who secured government jobs after late-night meetings at the presidential palace, based on its official entry-and-exit log.
Several of them had also accompanied Jerí on multiple official trips on the presidential plane. Jerí has denied wrongdoing and said the appointments were legal.
The shake-up at the top of Peruvian politics comes amid a tit-for-tat row between the US Trump administration’s newly appointed ambassador to Peru, Bernardo Navarro, and China.
Navarro, who began his diplomatic duties in Peru this month, lambasted “cheap Chinese money” in a post on X – adding that there was “no higher price to pay than losing sovereignty”, in what appeared to be a pointed reference to the port of Chancay, which is majority-owned by the Chinese firm Cosco Shipping Ports.
The fully automated port is located about 50 miles north of Lima. Previously, US officials have suggested that the deepwater port could be used for naval activities, which Peru has denied.
In response, China’s foreign ministry decried what it called the US’s “false accusations and disinformation against China’s cooperation with Peru” concerning Chancay port.
Keen to deflect the US’s diplomatic broadside, Peru’s foreign ministry posted a photograph on X of its minister shaking hands with China’s ambassador to Peru, Song Yang, to mark the lunar new year and praising Chinese investments and bilateral trade relations.
