Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia commits suicide to avoid being arrested for corruption

FORMER Peruvian president Alan Garcia has died in a Lima hospital after he shot himself in the head to avoid the humiliation of being arrested and prosecuted in connection with a bribery scandal while he was in office.

Mr Garcia, 69, who served as Peru's twice from 1985 to 1990 and again from 2006 to 2011, was the second leader of the Peruvian Aprista Party and its only member ever to have served as president. A skilled orator, he was initially elected as a firebrand leftist and then later as a champion of foreign investment and free trade during his second coming.

Of late, however, Mr Garcia, who has six children, had been dogged by allegations of corruption, although he repeatedly denied this. Mr Garcia was one of nine people a judge had ordered to be arrested yesterday for alleged involvement in bribes distributed by Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that triggered Latin America’s biggest graft scandal when it admitted in 2016 that it had paid kickbacks to politicians across the region to secure lucrative contracts.

While three former presidents in Peru have also been indicted in connection with Odebrecht, Garcia had blamed his legal troubles on political persecution, accusing incumbent President Martin Vizcarra of trying to silence him. Mr Garcia maintains there is no evidence linking him with the bribery scandal.

Members of his once-powerful Apra party announced his death to crowds gathered outside  Casimiro Ulloa in Lima, where he suffered three cardiac arrests and underwent emergency surgery after shooting himself. Already, the government has ordered national flags to be flown at half mast.

President Vizcarra said: "I’m dismayed by the death of former president Alan Garcia. I send my condolences to his family and loved ones.”

Mr Garcia’s death has shocked the Andean country that had watched him become one of the world’s youngest presidents when elected at 36 in 1985. His first term was marked by a severe economic crisis and the rise of leftist rebel groups but he was later re-elected to another five-year term in 2006 after remaking himself as a free-market proponent.

Peru's interior minister Carlos Moran, said that Mr Garcia had told police he needed to call his attorney after they arrived at his home to arrest him. He then entered his room and closed the door behind him and within a few minutes, a shot from a firearm was heard, so police forcibly entered the room and found Mr Garcia sitting with a wound in his head.

Last year, Mr Garcia asked Uruguay for political asylum after he was banned from leaving Peru to keep him from fleeing or obstructing investigations into the bribery scandal. Uruguay rejected the request.

Mr Garcia would have been the third former president of Peru to have been jailed in the Odebrecht case. Ollanta Humala spent nine months in pre-trial detention in 2017/2018 and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was arrested without charges last week.

A fourth former president, Alejandro Toledo, is fighting extradition from California after a judge in Peru ordered him jailed for 18 months in connection with Odebrecht in 2017. In Peru, criminal suspects can be ordered to spend up to three years in jail before trial if prosecutors can show they have evidence that likely would lead to a conviction and the suspect would likely flee or try to interfere in the investigation.

Chilean president Sebastian Pinera, said: “I interacted with him a lot, not just when we both were presidents but before and afterward. May God take his soul.”