Global Integrity Report: Peru - 2010

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

HIGHLIghts

Peru has made significant gains since Global Integrity’s previous assessment of the country in 2007. The country’s overall improvement has been bolstered in part by more effective implementation of its already very strong legislative anti-corruption framework. Citizen access to information has seen improvements, and a recently passed whistle-blowing protection law for the public sector is now in place. The audit agency is relatively well-staffed, independent, and effective, and citizens are able to access audit reports easily. Nevertheless, the power of the anti-corruption agency to carry out independent investigations continues to be compromised because it is under the control of the executive branch. Moreover, its ability to initiate investigations independently is “highly determined by the political style of the prime minister.” Rules to regulate conflicts of interest amongst members of the judiciary and civil service are weak; while the asset disclosures of judges are occasionally audited when scandals erupt, there is little systematic auditing. Law enforcement suffers from ongoing politicization, and its efforts to reform and professionalize are hampered by limited resources.

From the Reporter's Notebook: In early 2011, President Alan Garcia, two leading presidential candidates and senior members of a third candidate’s party were linked by police and local media reports to suspects of drug traffickers or coca growers. The reports increase fears that traffickers and planters, used to help the campaigns of mayors in rural coca-growing towns, are moving on to national politics. “I think there’s no longer any doubt that drug trafficking has penetrated politics, and not just in the VRAE and Huallaga (coca-growing towns),” Fernando Rospigliosi, a former interior minister, told La Radio del Sur.