The Costa Rican Prosecutor’s Office on Monday ordered the freezing of a $6.5 million bank account belonging to a corporation administered by people close to Peru’s former President Alejandro Toledo.
The ex-president is linked to a scandal over two properties worth millions of dollars allegedly purchased with money from Costa Rica.
Toledo on Monday afternoon said on his Facebook page that he does not own any bank accounts in Costa Rica, disputing earlier news reports.
That news was published in May by several media outlets in Peru, which said that Toledo’s mother-in-law, Eva Fernenbug, bought a $4 million building and an $800,000 office using money from a company founded in Costa Rica.
The company was established on Jan. 23, 2012, at a law firm in Costa Rica under the corporate name of Ecoteva Consulting Group.
Fernenbug then became the head of the corporation through a document created in Belgium.
According to Peruvian media, Costa Rica’s National Registry confirmed the properties do not appear as part of the company’s assets.
The Prosecutor’s Office’s move to freeze the account is part of an investigation to determine whether “corporations were formed to perform transactions, purchases or if there was any transfer of money from criminal activities carried out in Peru,” the coordinator of the Prosecutor’s Office’s Economic Crimes and Money Laundering unit, Olger Calvo Calderón, said in a press release. The alleged crime commited by the corporation’s owners is money laundering, the statement said.
Peru’s Prosecutor’s Office is investigating alleged embezzlement by several public officials who working in Toledo’s administration from 2001-2006. The former president is scheduled to testify in the probe in coming days.
