Hitmen murdered a former worker who was allegedly involved in a network of prostitutes hired to offer their services in exchange for key votes in Parliament.
Are there congresspersons procurer in Peru? That is the question half the country has been asking since December 10, when three hitmen on motorcycles pounced on the cab in which Andrea Vidal Gómez, 28, was traveling and shot her not once, not twice, but 70 times. Two of those bullets went through her head.
According to the prosecutor’s investigations, such overkill would be related to an objective: to silence her so that she would not reveal details of a network of procure and prostitution inside the Congress of the Republic of Peru, where she worked until September 2024 as an advisor in the Legal and Constitutional Office, under the orders of an official named Jorge Torres Saravia.
Vidal died a week later, after a long agony in the Hospital Dos de Mayo, in the heart of Lima, without being able to say a word.
The same investigations indicate that Vidal was responsible for recruiting young women with no academic or professional experience to work as secretaries or administrative personnel in different offices of the Congress, with the complicity of the political parties represented there, to later offer their sexual services to parliamentarians in exchange for their voting in a certain way in key sessions.
Witnesses interviewed by various local media, who have withheld their identities, have pointed to Jorge Torres as the organizer of this criminal practice, which was consummated with private meetings after parties in apartments rented via platforms such as Airbnb. Torres allegedly dismissed Andrea Vidal and two other congressional staff members at the behest of a high-ranking official, as yet unknown.
One of the young women involved, Isabel Cajo Salvador, who allegedly participated in the parties organized by Torres, published content on the adult platform OnlyFans until February this year. She began her career in Parliament in the area of Property Administration and then worked directly with Torres, to finally move to the office of Congressman Edwin Martinez where she currently earns 7,000 soles (almost 1,900 dollars) a month, despite not even having completed high school.
As usual, the political class as a whole has tried to disassociate itself from this accusation. Torres himself rejected the accusations and regretted Vidal’s death. He also said that he did not determine her dismissal but that it was the Human Resources area of the Parliament, although a journalistic report of the weekly Hildebrandt en sus trece revealed that two weeks before the crime Vidal met with Torres in his office, and left the place visibly affected.
The crisis has spilled over to the Alianza Para el Progreso Party (APP), which was the party that brought Torres to Congress. Although he does not appear as a militant in its ranks, in social networks there are several photographs of him participating in proselytizing activities of this group, and even accompanying its general secretary, Luis Valdéz, former congressman and right arm of the party’s leader, César Acuña. Both have distanced themselves from Torres.
Acuña, governor of the northern region of La Libertad, has a close relationship with the President of the Republic, Dina Boluarte. On multiple occasions he has defended her from citizen criticism and one of his ally, doctor Cesar Vasquez, is currently the government’s Minister of Health since June last year. There has even been talk of a co-government between APP and Boluarte, after the power survey of the magazine Semana Económica in September showed that Acuña and Boluarte have practically the same share of power in Peru.
While Vidal’s murder and the alleged sexual exploitation are being investigated in two separate fiscal folders, the Congressional Oversight Commission has also taken part in the matter and has summoned several officials to initiate investigations into the case. Several benches with seats in the Parliament have asked for the resignation of the president of this power of the State, Eduardo Salhuana, who is also a member of the APP, but he has ruled out that this will happen.
The perception that there is a lumpen Congress is evident. Procurer joins the long list of very serious crimes for which officials or members of the Peruvian Parliament are investigated by the justice system. In the next elections, citizens no longer expect good representatives; only that the new ones will not be worse than the previous ones.
*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.
Autor
Periodista peruano especialista en Política. Máster en Comunicación Corporativa por la Universitat de Barcelona. Licenciado en Periodismo y Audiovisuales con experiencia en conducción de TV, comunicación social y corporativa.
