LIMA, Peru _ Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned Wednesday after political opponents released video and audio recordings that they say implicate the 79-year-old leader in a vote-buying scheme to avoid impeachment.
Kuczynski's departure ends a long-running political battle with Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori and the leader of the Popular Force majority faction in Congress. Kuczynski defeated her in the 2016 presidential race.
A former World Bank economist and Wall Street banker who had never run for public office, Kuczynski ran a campaign based on promises to clean up a government beset by corruption.
On Tuesday, Keiko Fujimori released seven excerpts from video and audio recordings in which lawmakers allied with Kuczynski allegedly promised public works projects in districts of members of the opposition party in exchange for their support in last year's impeachment proceedings. Kuczynski narrowly escaped impeachment on "moral incapacity" charges in December.
Kuczynski went on trial after it became known that a consulting firm he co-owned, called Westfield, received an estimated $700,000 in contracts from disgraced Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht while Kuczinsky held high offices in the Peruvian government.
The president claimed he knew nothing of the contracts, having distanced himself from the consulting business when he took up various Cabinet posts, including economy minister, between 2001 and 2006 under then-President Alejandro Toledo.
But last month, the president's political situation became more tenuous after Jorge Barata, Odebrecht's former Peru manager, told investigators looking into the so-called Car Wash corruption scandal in Brazil that in 2015 he also paid $300,000 to a "functionary" of Kuczynski's as a contribution to his presidential campaign.
