Peru corruption scandal widens to top Garcia aide

[Judi Lynn]

Peru corruption scandal widens to top Garcia aide
Wed 8 Oct 2008, 18:36 GMT
By Marco Aquino

LIMA, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Opposition leaders in Peru demanded that President Alan Garcia shake up his entire cabinet on Wednesday, as a scandal over steering lucrative oil concessions to favored bidders spread to his prime minister, Jorge del Castillo.

The opposition said that Garcia's right-hand man Castillo should be fired after details of a tape implicating him in the scandal surfaced on Wednesday in the newspaper Peru 21.

Police tried to round up members of Garcia's APRA party who are at the center of the scandal and Congress said it would investigate dozens of oil contracts awarded since 2006 to foreign energy companies.

"There's corruption in the government," Lourdes Flores, a former presidential candidate who leads the conservative opposition, said on RPP radio.

Her calls for Castillo and other ministers to quit were echoed by Ollanta Humala, the ultra-nationalist leader who hopes to win the presidency in 2011, and congressional member Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori

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