E-Malt.com News article: 2973

Peru: President Alejandro Toledo has rejected accusations that he received bribes from a former presidential adviser who allegedly arranged a $2 million kickback to favor the sale of Peru's primary beer brewer in 2002, Associated Press posted on July 19. "Any insinuation about my personal participation or via my office in any legal or illegal conduct is completely false," he said Saturday in a televised address during the airing of the Copa America quarterfinals between the national team and Argentina.

Peru's leading newspaper, El Comercio, reported in June that Latin America's fourth largest brewer, Colombia-based Bavaria, paid Toledo's former adviser Cesar Almeyda $2 million to ease its purchase of Union de Cervecerias Backus & Johnston.

The driver of an associate of Almeyda's who allegedly was involved in transferring the cash quoted Almeyda as saying half the bribe was destined for the president.

Several foreign companies had vied for control of Peru's Backus & Johnston. The supposed kickback was in exchange for smoothing over the transfer of shares with Conasev, a government regulatory authority, for Bavaria to consolidate its control of the brewer and to ensure millions of dollars of tax breaks. Almeyda was on the regulatory agency's board of directors at the time.

Toledo acknowledged that he met with Bavaria executives, as he does with many private businesses to promote investment in Peru, but denied any involvement with the transfer of shares.

Both Bavaria and Almeyda deny any wrongdoing. Almeyda is currently jailed in connection with a 2-year-old audio recording made public in January, in which he allegedly advised a fugitive retired army general how to bribe judges investigating him on corruption charges. Toledo said the case, now under investigation by the attorney general's office, would continue "under strict independence."


21 July, 2004