Peru ex-president Garcia shoots himself after Judiciary orders his arrest

The former president Peru Alan García shot himself in the head in a bid to evade going to jail. Speaking on a local television channel his lawyer Erasmo Reyna confirmed that García the former President of Peru shot himself before being detained by police amid allegations he received illegal payment from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

There had been Judicial orders issued to arrest the former president and he was feeling the heat.

Peru’s Health Ministry said García was sent to José Casimiro Ulloa Hospital at 6:45 a.m. local for a bullet wound to the head.

“At this moment, the patient has been in an operating room at said hospital since 7:10 a.m.,” the ministry said.

It said his condition was delicate.

García was under investigation for bribes allegedly paid during the construction of Lima’s metro during his 2006-2011 government. He had denied ever receiving money from Odebrecht, which is at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal after admitting in a 2016 plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department that it paid corrupt officials across Latin America nearly $800 million in exchange for major infrastructure contracts.

The scandal has led to the jailing of numerous politicians across the region, especially in Peru, where former President Pedro Pablo Kucyznski was detained just last week as part of a money laundering probe into his ties to the company.

Congressional allies of Kuczynski said he was also taken Tuesday night to a local clinic with high blood pressure.

A Peruvian judge last week ordered Kuczynski’s detention for 10 days as he investigates some $782,000 in previously undisclosed payments from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht more than a decade ago. A hearing is scheduled to take place Wednesday to decide whether to increase his detention to three years.

García, 69, was a populist firebrand whose erratic first presidency in the 1980s was marked by hyperinflation, rampant corruption and the rise of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

When he returned to power two decades later he ran a more conservative government, helping usher in a commodities-led investment boom in which Odebrecht played a major supporting role.