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Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.

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The scandal broke with the emergence of videos of the meetings, showing the president, wearing a top with a hood pulled over his head in one and in dark glasses and gesturing wildly while making a telephone call in the other.

Both meetings were with a well-connected Chinese businessman, Yang Zhihua, whom Jerí refers to as “Johnny” and who has resided in Peru for decades. Yang has built a small business empire including shops, restaurants and a concession for a hydroelectric project.

Prosecutors say another Chinese citizen, Ji Wu Xiaodong, who was present at the first meeting in the restaurant, is accused of belonging to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia and had been placed under house arrest for two years.

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Official records show Ji Wu, an accredited Spanish translator who had worked with Lima’s Chinese embassy, made several visits to the presidential palace in the last few months, accompanied by Yang.

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The interim president had previously issued a public apology after the meeting at the Chinese restaurant emerged, which appeared to have been shakily filmed on a smartphone […] But hours after Jerí’s apology, another video emerged showing the second meeting with Yang, at his store in Chinatown, which had been forced to close by Lima’s municipal government for selling unauthorised products.

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The Chinese firm Cosco Shipping Ports built a fully automated deepwater port in Chancay, 50 miles (80km) north of Lima, which has been operating since November 2024 and offers an express trade route to China.

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