Prime Minister Aníbal Torres announced this Friday that they have submitted before Congress a draft law establishing the offense of disclosure of tax information in criminal cases. The norm was approved at the last meeting of the Council of Ministers.
“A bill has been passed that qualifies the dissemination of confidential information in the course of criminal investigations as a crime. The criminal investigation at its preliminary stage has been retained. It ceases to be reserved when it proceeds to the oral test. There are no reservations publicly,” he said at a press conference.
Hannibal Torres argued that such disclosure should be avoided reserved information and specified that the sanction would be four years in prison.
“Today, it happens that in the course of investigations, confidential information quickly becomes public. Sometimes information is selected for the purpose of imputing the commission of a crime. This shouldn’t happen. That is why we are presented Congress a bill to end this form of practical commercialization of reserved criminal information. And this is even sanctioned in some cases by four years in prison,” he added.
This bill was announced in advance by Justice Minister Felix Chereau on 13 June. The head of Minzhus assured that the measure was aimed at “protecting” the presumption of innocence of those under investigation. In this sense, he stressed that “in no case” will journalists be forced to disclose their sources.
“The justice system needs to make sure that its officials reserve the investigation so that it is not misrepresented. […] When it is done for the purpose hinder, interfere with or distort the course of an investigationI consider it appropriate not only to create audit control mechanisms, but also punitive when that information falls into the hands of third parties for that purpose,” he told Canal N.
ANP rejects Minjusdh bill
The National Association of Journalists of Peru (ANP) reviewed the initiative Ministry of Justice and Human Rights (Minjusdh) to promote a bill to punish judges, prosecutors and police officers who leak information about their cooperative seekers to the press when it comes to closed cases.
This institution spoke in some Twitter posts about the challenges that investigative journalism will have if this initiative is implemented. In this sense, he worried that there was “synchronization” between the executive and legislature against the press.
Source: RPP
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