Keiko Fujimori denies Argentine consultant Fernando Cerimedo worked on her campaign

Keiko Fujimori says she does not know why Argentine political consultant Fernando Cerimedo visited Lima for her inauguration and denies that he worked on her campaign.

Asked by journalists in Peru’s Piura region about Cerimedo’s presence in Lima on July 28, when she took office, Fujimori said she had no personal or professional relationship with him and had never communicated with him. “I don’t know what the visit was about. I may have greeted him, but I have no communication or relationship with him,” she said.

The newspaper La República reported that Cerimedo arrived in Lima from Bolivia on July 27 and stayed through the inauguration. Other foreign consultants whom Fujimori has acknowledged as campaign collaborators, including Argentine Damián Valenzuela and Cuban Carlos Díaz Rosillo, also attended the ceremony.

Cerimedo’s former partner, Bolivian lawyer Nadia Beller, told the newspaper that he met a woman from Fujimori’s campaign team in Lima on inauguration day and that their connection began the previous year. Cerimedo is being held in Santa Cruz over the alleged attempted femicide of Beller and a separate suspected illicit-enrichment case involving money found during a search of his home.

The cases have also focused attention on Cerimedo’s alleged relationship with Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz. His critics, including former president Evo Morales and Vice President Edmand Lara, say Cerimedo served as Paz’s personal adviser. Cerimedo worked on Javier Milei’s communications strategy during Argentina’s 2023 presidential campaign, was linked to Brazil’s investigation into the January 2023 coup attempt and founded the La Derecha Diario news portal in 2021.

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I don’t know what the visit was about. I may have greeted him, but I have no communication or relationship with him.