Peru’s Public Prosecutor’s Office investigates the Ministry of Health after the discovery of numerous false death certificates

Peru’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened preliminary proceedings at the facilities of the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status (RENIEC) and the Ministry of Health for an alleged crime of attacking the integrity of computer data, for having altered death figures.

The investigation is being carried out by prosecutors specialized in cybercrime and experts from the Public Prosecutor’s Office with the purpose of “gathering information on the modification of the RENIEC death record”, according to the Peruvian agency Andina.

The scandal was unleashed in the country after a false death certificate of Segundo Alejandro Sanchez Sanchez, fugitive from justice and owner of a house located in Breña, where President Pedro Castillo used to meet during his first days in office, was made public.

Sanchez Sanchez was on the run from justice since last Tuesday 11th and when the authorities issued a preliminary detention two days later he started to be listed as deceased in the RENIEC page. However, the doctor who supposedly certified the death was quick to deny in the media that he had not made that signature and would take legal action, according to the newspaper ‘Gestión’.

However, the first records of false deaths date back to the end of September, when two members of a family realized that they could not confirm their polling place because it appeared as ‘deceased’. Although on the 25th the death of Pedro Castillo himself, decapitated in the Government Palace, was ‘certified’.

However, the head of RENIEC, Carmen Milagros Velarde Koechlin, has pointed out the doctors as responsible, since they were authorized by the Ministry of Health to certify the deaths. In addition, she announced that from now on, no more certificates of this nature will be processed through the Internet and has invited the health professionals to do it manually.