The Committee to Protect Journalists joined more than 230 journalists and press freedom organizations from 18 countries, in a statement calling on the Peruvian attorney general to reject a report recommending criminal charges against Peruvian investigative journalist and 1998 IPFA awardee Gustavo Gorriti, director of investigative news site IDL-Reporteros.
The Peruvian Congress approved the final report of the multiparty parliamentary commission that investigated the collaboration agreement between the Peruvian government and the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht amid an anti-corruption Car Wash Operation that started in Brazil and expanded to other countries across Latin America.
It recommends filing criminal charges against prosecutors, attorneys general, and Gorriti, accused of bribery, influence peddling, and obstruction of justice on the grounds that he allegedly offered media favors in exchange for influencing decisions by the Prosecutor’s Office. IDL-Reporteros revealed the massive transnational bribery networks, illicit campaign financing, and rigged public contracts between Odebrecht and the Peruvian government in the series Car Wash/White Collars, which won the Global Shining Light Awards in 2019.
The statement condemns the commission report and recommended criminal charges as a “clear abuse of parliamentary power” to harass and silence Gorriti, whose investigations have exposed serious cases of corruption involving political and judicial figures who currently hold power in the country.
Read the full statement in Spanish here.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.