"Fujimori cleared in Peru sterilization case" by Franklin Briceno | Associated Press, January 26, 2014
LIMA — Peruvian prosecutors say they have dropped a criminal investigation against Alberto Fujimori, former president, and health ministers who served under him over a 1990s mass sterilization program under which thousands of women say they were forcibly sterilized.
The probe had been reopened in 2011 under pressure from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In a statement Friday, prosecutor Marco Guzman said the inquiry against Fujimori and 26 former high-ranking officials had been shelved after deciding that no crime against humanity had been committed.
Sigfredo Florian, a lawyer representing the victims, said they would appeal….
Fujimori, now imprisoned for corruption and authorizing death squads, said the sterilizations of more than 300,000 women, mostly poor, illiterate Indians, from 1995-2000 were voluntary.
But the women say they were deceived, browbeaten, threatened with jail, bribed with food parcels, and otherwise pressured into the operations to meet program quotas.
Activists say that besides being forced, the sterilizations were often carried out in unsanitary conditions, [with] 18 cases of women who died of infections shortly after surgery.
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"US agents target counterfeiters in Peru" by Carla Salazar | Associated Press, September 06, 2013
LIMA — The police colonel was stunned by the skill of the 13-year-old arrested during a raid on counterfeiters in Lima’s gritty outskirts, how he deftly slid the shiny plastic security strip through a bogus $100 banknote emblazoned with Benjamin Franklin’s face.
The boy demonstrated his technique for police after they arrested him on the street with a sack of $700,000 in false US dollars and euros that he had gotten from a co-conspirator and he led them to a squat house where he and others did detail work.
With its meticulous criminal craftsmen, cheap labor, and by some accounts, less effective law enforcement, Peru has in the past two years overtaken Colombia as the top source of counterfeit US dollars, according to the US Secret Service, protector of the world’s most widely traded currency.
Never you mind that Federal Reserve printing press devaluing the currency with the perpetual printing press.
In response, the service opened a permanent office in Lima last year, only its fourth in Latin America, and has since helped Peru’s police arrest 50 people on counterfeiting charges.
During the past decade, $103 million in fake US dollars ‘‘made in Peru’’ have been seized — nearly half since 2010, Peruvian and US officials say. Unlike most other counterfeiters, who rely on sophisticated late-model inkjet printers, the Peruvians go a step further — finishing each bill by hand.
‘‘It’s a very good note,’’ said a Secret Service officer at the US Embassy. ‘‘They use offset, huge machines that are used for regular printing of newspapers or flyers.’’
‘‘Once a note is printed they will throw five people [on it] and do little things, little touches that add to the quality,’’ he said, speaking on condition he not be further identified for security reasons.
The phony money heads mostly to the United States, but is also gets smuggled to nearby countries including Argentina, Venezuela, and Ecuador, said Colonel Segundo Portocarrero, chief of the Peruvian police’s fraud division.
It's ink and paper all right!
Peru became more attractive to counterfeiters as Washington’s decadelong Plan Colombia program tightened the screws not just on drug traffickers in that neighboring Andean nation but other criminals as well, he speculated.
The counterfeiting in Peru, meanwhile, got better.
‘‘It’s much more profitable than cocaine,’’ said a top investigator on Portocarrero’s team, noting another of Peru’s illegal exports.
UN crop estimates suggest Peru alos has overtaken Colombia as the world’s leading cocaine producer.
Why not kill two birds with one stone.
So how many CIA teams are in there helping run cocaine out?
But the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said counterfeiting is a better business since cocaine production has much higher overhead and transport and processing are far more complicated. Criminal penalties tend to be much higher as well.
The counterfeiters earn up to $20,000 in real currency for every $100,000 in false bills they produce after expenses, the investigator said.
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Here is another big pile if your are interested.
Also see:
Van Der Sloot a Dad
Peroops
He didn't use protection because he thought she was sterile.
