"Pay-to-play" scandal rocks Peru presidential race

"Pay-to-play" scandal rocks Peru presidential race
Tue Jan 4, 2011 10:27pm GMT
By Caroline Stauffer and Teresa Cespedes

LIMA (Reuters) - The campaign of Peruvian presidential front-runner Luis Castaneda was thrown into disarray on Tuesday by allegations that one of his running mates paid to be on his ticket.

Carmen Rosa Nunez de Acuna denied a report in the newspaper Peru 21 that she paid 500,000 soles (£114,181) -- a relative fortune in the Andean country -- to become one of Castaneda's two picks to contest Peru's two vice presidential posts.

Peru 21 said it obtained audiotapes of phone calls in which Nunez discussed making payments to Castaneda's National Solidarity party. Beyond the "pay to play" implications, the transfers would have exceeded the limit of 216,000 soles that individual donors can legally give to political parties.

The scandal, the first serious one of the race, could hurt Castaneda just three months before election day on April 10.

Castaneda, a centrist former mayor of Lima, is nearly tied for first in opinion polls with former President Alejandro Toledo and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.

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The biggest, most well-heeled interested party, in having a rightwing government in Peru, is the U.S.