Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, has dismissed an investigation into her use of luxury watches as a “smoke-screen”, denying wrongdoing and saying that the items had been loaned to her, though she admitted to journalists that it was a “mistake” to have accepted them.
Earlier on Friday she faced closed-door questioning by prosecutors which lasted nearly five hours, amid allegations of illicit enrichment linked to her use of at least three Rolex watches and designer jewellery that appeared inconsistent with her modest monthly presidential salary of about £3,320 ($4,200).
The president’s fierce denial comes just a week after police and prosecutors battered down the door of her home in a Lima suburb in a night-time raid searching for the watches. The Rolexgate scandal has embroiled her government in a political crisis and forced the unpopular leader to reshuffle her cabinet after abrupt resignations.
Boluarte, 61, is far from being the first Peruvian president to be accused of corruption but the allegations have done nothing to improve the reputation of a leader accused of presiding over the killings of 49 people by security forces during widespread protests over the ousting of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in December 2022. She faces a separate ongoing investigation over her role in those deaths.
In a televised address to the nation, Boluarte said she told prosecutors that the watches had been a loan from Wilfredo Oscorima, the governor of Ayacucho, a region in Peru’s southern Andes, whom she described as a “friend” and a “brother”.
She said all the watches except one had been lent to her by Oscorima, who she said had told her he hoped they would project a good image of the country if she wore them.
“It was an error to accept as a loan those watches from my friend,” she said, adding she had already returned those she borrowed.
“As these watches are not my property, I was not obliged to declare them in my declaration of assets and income,” she added defiantly. She went on to dismiss allegations that she owned a luxury designer bracelet and necklace, saying the items in question were costume jewellery she had owned for years.
Boluarte dismissed the investigation as a “lie” and a “smoke-screen” and called on prosecutors to be more professional, rather than following leads from the “tendentious press”.
She blamed her failure to clarify the situation earlier on her lawyer Mateo Castañeda, who sat next to her at the press conference. She said he had advised her not to address the country until she had dealt with the prosecutors.
Boluarte’s late response to the allegations, which emerged in mid-March, may do little to allay scepticism. The scandal began when La Encerrona, a popular Peruvian news podcast, analysed 10,000 images from the presidential Flickr account, revealing what appeared to be an undisclosed collection of luxury watches and jewellery.
The prosecutor’s office made no immediate comment following Boluarte’s testimony.
