Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Godard (Latin American Spanish:[ˌpedɾoˌpablokuˌtʃinski‿ɣoˈðaɾð];[a] born 3 October 1938), also known simply asPPK (Spanish:[pepeˈka]), is a Peruvian economist, public administrator, and former politician who served as thepresident of Peru from 2016 to 2018. He served asprime minister of Peru and asminister of economy and finance during the presidency ofAlejandro Toledo. Kuczynski resigned from the presidency on 23 March 2018, following a successfulimpeachment vote and days before a probable conviction vote.[1] Since 10 April 2019 he has been inpretrial detention, due to an ongoing investigation on corruption, money laundering, and connections toOdebrecht, a public works company accused of paying bribes.[2]
On 15 December 2017, theCongress of Peru, which was controlled by the oppositionPopular Force, initiatedimpeachment proceedings against Kuczynski, after he was accused of lying about receiving payments from thescandal-hit Brazilian construction firmOdebrecht in the mid-2000s.[10] However, on 21 December 2017, the Peruvian Congress lacked the majority of votes needed to impeach Kuczynski.[11] After further scandals and facing a second impeachment vote, Kuczynski resigned from the presidency on 21 March 2018 following the release of videos showing alleged acts ofvote buying, presenting his resignation to theCouncil of Ministers.[12][13] He was succeeded as president by his First Vice PresidentMartín Vizcarra. On 28 April 2019, Kuczynski was placed under house arrest while under investigation for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht.[14]
In 1967, Kuczynski returned to Peru to work at the country's central bank during the presidency ofFernando Belaúnde. Kuczynski went into exile in theUnited States in 1969 due to political persecution after Belaunde's government fell to the military dictatorship of GeneralJuan Velasco Alvarado in acoup d'état. The newly installed government accused Kuczynski of funnelling about $18 million (equivalent to $115 million in 2016) toNelson Rockefeller's International Petroleum Company. He joined theWorld Bank as the chief economist managing the northern countries ofLatin America, moving on to become Chief of Policy Planning.[21]
From 1983 to 1992, Kuczynski was co-chairman ofFirst Boston in New York City, an international investment bank. In 1992, he founded, with six other partners, the Latin American Enterprise Fund (LAEF) in Miami, Florida, aprivate equity firm that focused on investments inMexico,Central andSouth America. The institutional investors in LAEF included more than 15 of the world's largest university endowments, foundations, and pension funds. In 1983, he helped found theInter-American Dialogue and remained a member until 1997.[24]
In 1980, following the election ofFernando Belaúnde Terry as president, Kuczynski was invited to return to Peru to serve asMinister of Energy and Mines. In this position, he sponsored Law 23231 which, throughtax exemptions and other incentives, promoted oil and gas exploration and exploitation after a period of relative neglect. Kuczynski resigned in 1982 and returned to the private sector in the United States. During the second round of the2016 presidential campaign, he claimed that he had left Peru due to the threats and attacks from theShining Path insurgent group: "Let's remember that the terrorists not only hung myeffigy on thezanjón (a local denomination forPaseo de la República avenue in Lima) and inSan Martín square, but they attacked my apartment. Just as 3 million Peruvians, I left the country". This was in response to an attack by election opponentKeiko Fujimori (daughter of then-imprisoned former presidentAlberto Fujimori and main rival of PPK in the second round of elections) who claimed that Kuczynski did not "have moral authority tospeak of terrorism".[25]
During the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, Kuczynski was mainly involved in the private equity and fund management business in the United States. He made small personal donations to the presidential campaigns ofGeorge H. W. Bush and ofGeorge W. Bush, and to the state-senator campaign of his wife's cousin inWisconsin. He additionally made donations toNew York SenatorChuck Schumer andNew JerseySenatorBill Bradley.[26]
In 2007,Manuel Dammert, a sociologist and politician, alleged that Kuczynski was involved in facilitating the activities, in various projects in Peru, of a financial entity known as First Capital Partners, in particular in relation to theOlmos diversion project, theJorge Chávez International Airport, theTransportadora de Gas, and the Conrisa consortium. Former partners of Kuczynski in the Latin American Enterprise Fund had reportedly inaccurately listed Kuczynski as a founding partner of First Capital but corrected the error shortly afterwards. In consequence, Kuczynski sued Dammert for defamation and falsification of documents. Kuczynski prevailed at the first and second instance, but, on appeal,Peru's Supreme Court upheld Dammert's right to ask questions on matters of public interest, without ruling on the merits of Dammert's claims. These claims have been denied extensively by Kuczynski.[30]
Kuczynski greeting constituents outsidePalacio de Gobierno during his first term in office.
After working with the Toledo administration, Kuczynski founded Agua Limpia, a Peruvian non-governmental organization that provides drinking water systems to communities in Peru.[31] Agua Limpia is supported by theInter-American Development Bank,Scotia Bank of Canada and others.[32]
During the presidential campaign ofAlejandro Toledo, Kuczynski worked as the head of government planning team. He was later appointed as theMinister of Economy and Finance. As such, he made numerous agreements with theInternational Monetary Fund to help fulfill the goals in theneoliberal economic policies outlined by Peru. However, he was criticized on countless occasions byAlan García, the main leader of opposition to the government.
On 1 December 2010, Kuczynski announced that he would stand as a candidate for President of Peru in theupcoming elections.[33]
Kuczynski ran for President of Peru in the general election, though he did not pass into the run-off as head of theAlliance for the Great Change (Alliance for the Great Change), formed by theChristian People's Party, theAlliance for Progress, thePeruvian Humanist Party andNational Restoration.[20] He took third place in the vote, his opponents Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori went to the second round of elections on 5 June 2011, in which Humala was elected president of the country.
In 2015, he announced that he would run for president again, but with a political party that he had built himself (Peruvians for Change,Peruanos Por el Kambio, PPK).[34]
Kuczynski won 21% of the popular vote inPeru's general elections on April 10, 2016, to qualify for a runoff vote againstKeiko Fujimori,[35] in which he narrowly triumphed with 50.12% of the vote to Fujimori's 49.88%,[7] a margin of just thirty-nine thousand votes out of nearly eighteen million cast. Barely a week before the second round of voting, while trailing Keiko, Kuczynski received an important endorsement from third-place finisherVerónika Mendoza (18.82%), Peru's leading left-wing candidate, in an effort to defeat Fujimori.[34]
Keiko's party, Fuerza Popular, had an absolute majority inCongress with 73 of the 130 seats; PPK trailed with 18.[34]
Kuczynski was sworn in as president on 28 July 2016.[8][9] At age 77, he was the oldest President to take office.[36]
As part of the recent push in Peru to recognize and integrate indigenous peoples into national life, Kuczynski's government supported the use ofindigenous languages in Peru, with the state-run TV station starting to broadcast in December 2016 a daily news program inQuechua and in April 2017 one inAymara. The President's state-of-the-union address was simultaneously translated into Quechua in July 2017.[37]
Almost immediately after winning the election, Kuczynski, despite previous public statements in support of social conservatism, appointed nearly all his ministers from the left (including many of Toledo's ex-ministers), and his government quickly became known for its promotion offeminism, abortion rights, and LGBT rights. This did not please the conservatives who had previously supported him, which led to the censure of two of his education ministers by the opposition-controlled congress, and a no-confidence vote for his entire cabinet in 2017.
Kuczynski opposed the government ofNicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and welcomed Venezuelan expatriates. Nearly 200,000 Venezuelans settled in Peru, others moved to Peru, then later to Chile or Argentina. Kuczynski was one of the first leaders of the Latin American faction that asked for the democratization of Venezuela.[38] Peru revoked Venezuela's invitation to the8th Summit of the Americas because of Maduro's plan to hold an earlypresidential election, as the major opposing parties were banned from it.[39]
On 15 December 2017, theCongress of the Republic initiated impeachment proceedings against Kuczynski, with the congressional opposition stating that he had lost the ″moral capacity″ to lead the country after he admitted receiving advisory fees from scandal-hit Brazilian construction companyOdebrecht while he was Peru's Minister of Economy and Finance between 2004 and 2005.[40] Kuczynski had previously denied receiving any payments from Odebrecht, but later confessed that his company, Westfield Capital Ltd, had been receiving money from Odebrecht for advisory services, while still denying that irregularities existed in the payments.[41]
After further scandals broke out surrounding Kuczynski, a second impeachment vote was to be held on 22 March 2018. Two days before the vote, Kuczynski stated that he would not resign and decided to face the impeachment process for a second time. The next day on 21 March 2018, a video was released of Kuczynski allies, including his lawyer andKenji Fujimori, attempting to buy a vote against impeachment from one official.[43]
Following the release of the video, Kuczynski presented himself before congress and officially submitted his resignation to the Congress of the Republic.[12][13] Kuczynski's first vice president,Martín Vizcarra, was later named President of Peru on 23 March 2018.
Kuczynski announced his resignation from the presidency on 21 March 2018.[44]
I think what’s best for the country is for me to resign to the Presidency of the Republic. I don’t want to be an obstacle for the nation’s search for a path to unity and harmony that it very needs and that was refused to me. I don’t want the motherland nor my family to continue suffering with the uncertainty of these recent times. [...] There will be a constitutionally ordered transition.[45]
This came in result of the dissemination of videos and audios, known asKenjivideos, that evidenced collusion between the executive and the legislature in order to give privileges and illicit profits to MPs in order to knock down thesecond impeachment process against Kuczynski. The resignation was accepted on 23 March 2018 by thePeruvian Congress and First Vice PresidentMartín Vizcarra took oath immediately before the Congress.
Resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
In favor: 105 congressmen
Against: 12 congressmen
Abstentions: 4 congressmen
Absents: 9 congressmen
Other presidents of Peru who have resigned areGuillermo Billinghurst (forced resignation),Andrés Avelino Cáceres andAlberto Fujimori. The current Peruvian Constitution of 1993 establishes in its article 113 that the Presidency of the Republic be vacated by:[46]
Death of the President of the Republic.
His permanent moral or physical disability, declared by Congress.
Acceptance of his resignation by Congress.
Leaving the national territory without permission of the Congress or not returning to it within the established period.
Dismissal, after having been sanctioned for any of the infractions mentioned in Article 117 of the Constitution.
The Board of Spokesmen of the Congress agreed to accept the resignation.[47]
On 23 March the acceptance of the resignation Kuczynski was approved, and a presidential vacancy was declared with 105 votes in favor, 12 votes against and four abstentions.[48][49]
On 10 April 2019, he was arrested along with his secretary Gloria Kisic Wagner and his ex-driver José Luis Bernaola for an alleged crime of money laundering in the Odebrecht case.[50] In turn, he authorized the Prosecutor's Office to search for 48 hours the homes linked to their surroundings in search of documents related to that case.
On 19 April 2019, Judge Jorge Chávez placed Kuczynski in preventive detention for a period of three years. Kuczynski received the news at a clinic in Lima where he was hospitalized for a cardiac intervention derived from a hypertension crisis. For Gloria Kisic Wagner and José Luis Bernaola, the judge rejected preventive detention and ordered that both serve a restricted appearance.
On 2 May 2019, Kuczynski left the clinic where he was hospitalized and was transferred to his home where he is under house arrest.[51]
In the Pandora Papers leak of 3 October 2021, Kuczynski was named in the revealed documents.[52][53] The leak allegedly showed that when Kuczynski was Minister of the Economy in July 2004, he created Dorado Asset Management Ltd with the help of OMC Group in theBritish Virgin Islands.[53] Kuczynski's attorney responded to the Pandora documents saying "Dorado was conceived exclusively as a legal mechanism for patrimonial protection; it was used only for two properties acquired with money of lawful origin".[53]
His father,Maxime Hans Kuczynski, was born inBerlin,[19] then part of theGerman Empire. He was a bacteriologist who served in theGerman Army duringWorld War I on theBalkan front. He was a renowned pathologist and tropical disease specialist, in particular expert onverruga peruana or Carrion's disease. He trained at theUniversities of Rostock andBerlin, where he was professor of pathology.[54] His father was an officer in the German Army on the Eastern and Turkish fronts in the First World War, and he traveled widely in Russia, China, West Africa, and Brazil. Maxime Hans Kuczynski left Germany in 1933 uponHitler's rise to power, and he was invited to Peru in 1936 by PresidentÓscar R. Benavides to set up the public health service in the interior of the country. Maxime Hans Kuczynski reformed the San Pablo leprosarium on the Amazon at the Brazilian frontier, set up a public health colony on the Perene river, and was later professor of tropical medicine atNational University of San Marcos in Lima.[55][56]
Kuczynski has been married twice, first to Jane Dudley Casey, the daughter ofJoseph E. Casey, a former member of theUnited States House of Representatives for the 3rd district of Massachusetts. Their children are businesswoman Carolina Madeleine Kuczynski, theNew York Times journalistAlex Kuczynski,[27] and John-Michael Kuczynski. Kuczynski and Casey divorced in 1995.
Kuczynski's second wife isNancy Lange, an American and theFirst Lady of Peru until Kuczynski's resignation in 2018.[57] The couple, who married in 1996, have one daughter, Suzanne Kuczynski Lange, a biology graduate.[57][58][59]
^Bartholomew Dean 2004 "El Dr. Maxime Kuczynski-Godard y la medicina social en la Amazonía peruana" Introduction in La Vida en la Amazonía Peruana: Observaciones de un medico. by Maxime Kuczynski-Godard. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Serie Clásicos Sanmarquinos; Compilation and introductory essay of second edition, originally published in 1944; digital copyhere)
^Kuczynski, Pedro-Pablo (February 1981). "The Peruvian External Debt: Problem and Prospect".Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs.23 (1):3–28.doi:10.2307/165541.JSTOR165541.
^Durand, Francisco (2018).Odebrecht, la empresa que capturaba gobiernos. Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. p. 37.ISBN978-612-317-425-5.
^Bartholomew Dean 2004 “El Dr. Máxime Kuczynski-Godard y la medicina social en la Amazonía peruana” Introduction in La Vida en la Amazonía Peruana: Observaciones de un medico. by Máxime Kuczynski-Godard. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Serie Clásicos Sanmarquinos) (Compilation and introductory essay of second edition, originally published in 1944)