Alan Garcia, 69, ensnared in a giant bribery probe into Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, is being treated in hospital
When police swooped to arrest Alan Garcia, the former Peruvian president now embroiled in a corruption case, he shot himself in the head before he could be detained.
“The former president made the decision to shoot himself,” Garcia’s lawyer Erasmo Reyna said outside Casimiro Ulloa hospital, according to CNN.He was a populist firebrand whose erratic first presidency was marked by hyperinflation, rampant corruption and the rise of the Shining Path guerrilla movement. When he returned to power he ran a more conservative government, helping usher in a commodities-led investment boom in which Brazil’s Odebrecht played a major supporting role.
Before taking his drastic step on Wednesday Garcia had tried, and failed, to claim asylum at the embassy of Uruguay in Lima in November of last year. He made that move after a Peruvian judge placed a travel ban on him. he is far from the first high profile politician to be caught up in the Odebrecht scandal, one of the biggest of its kind that the world has ever seen. The BBC reports that prosecutors have been working on the case across 12 countries in Latin America and beyond.
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