Pablo Sánchez: profile of the new Prosecutor of the Nation, who assumes office as of today

Supreme Prosecutor Pablo Sánchez Velarde returns to the office of the Attorney General's Office, but this time on an interim basis from today, Wednesday, March 30 to the month of June 2022. A day earlier, Supreme Prosecutor Zoraida Ávalos Rivera completed her three-year term.

Sánchez Velarde assumes the position because he is the oldest incumbent supreme prosecutor, as stipulated in the Organic Law of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which states that when the Board of Senior Supreme Prosecutors cannot meet and, therefore, cannot elect a national prosecutor, the position falls to the highest tenured supreme prosecutor in office.

The National Board of Justice is expected to meet in the first week of June to elect two new senior incumbent prosecutors. This would allow the Board of Supreme Prosecutors to have the required quorum to elect what would be the nation's new prosecutor.

This is the second time that Sánchez Velarde, has taken over as Acting Attorney of the Nation. The first time was in 2015, after the suspension from office of Carlos Ramos Heredia.

Subsequently, in July of that same year “the Board of Supreme Prosecutors ratified it and remained in office for a period of three years, until July 2018″,

He was then replaced by Pedro Chávarry Vallejos, who was forced to resign from office in January 2019 due to his confrontation with the Lava Jato Special Team and the Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto scandal.

WHO IS PABLO SÁNCHEZ?

The current prosecutor of the Nation is the authority with the longest standing in office. Until yesterday, he served as Chief Prosecutor of the First Supreme Criminal Prosecutor's Office. He was also coordinator of the Special Team in the case 'Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto'.

He is a lawyer graduated from the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM), with a study in foreign and international criminal law from the Max Planck Institute in Germany. In addition, he holds a doctorate in criminal procedural law from the University of Valencia, in Spain.

On the other hand, he has extensive work experience in the field of his specialization. From December 1983 to April 1984, he joined the First Superior Criminal Prosecutor's Office of Lima as Office Officer II. He then worked as Law Technician II (1984) and Lawyer IV (1985-1986) at the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of Lima. In 1986 he served as Assistant Attorney to the Prosecutor in the National System of Prosecutors and Technical Director at the National Institute of Public Prosecutions (1991-1992).

Sánchez Velarde became a prosecutor in 1992, where he worked as provisional deputy provincial prosecutor at the Fifth Superior Criminal Prosecutor's Office in Lima until 1993. Until May 1994, he was Provisional Provincial Prosecutor in the Seventh Provincial Criminal Prosecutor's Office of Lima.

He became Senior Prosecutor in Lima's Eighth Senior Criminal Prosecutor's Office (1994-2003), Senior Coordinating Prosecutor in the First Senior Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Offences of Corruption of Offences of Civil Servants (2003-2005) and Senior Supreme Prosecutor in the Second Supreme Prosecutor's Office for Criminal Matters (2005-2014).

From January 2015 to July 2018, he served as Attorney of the Nation, and then reached the position in which he served so far.

CONSTITUTIONAL COMPLAINT AGAINST HIM

On June 17, 2020, it was reported that then-Supreme Prosecutor Tomás Gálvez filed a criminal and constitutional complaint against Judge Pablo Sánchez Velarde before the Congress of the Republic. The reasons: alleged crimes committed during his action as prosecutor of the Nation.

Notification of the complaint was addressed to the then President of Congress, Manuel Merino, and was received on June 16. The document noted the crimes of aggravated personal cover-up, actual cover-up, abuse of authority, legal sponsorship, aggravated collusion, usurpation of functions, improper disclosure of aggravated identity, and ideological falsehood.

It should be emphasized that at that time Sánchez Velarde was investigating Gálvez in the context of the case called Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto, along with other members of the Judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office.

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