Sanchez Party Files Fraud Complaint Against Peru Foreign Minister Over Overseas Vote

Juntos por el Peru, the party led by Roberto Sanchez, has filed a constitutional complaint against Peru's foreign minister, Carlos Pareja, accusing him of presiding over alleged fraud in the handling of votes cast abroad during the presidential runoff.

The filing pushes a running post-election dispute into a more formal legal and political phase. It centers on the overseas vote, a sensitive part of the count in an election that remains closely contested.

According to the accusations reported by EL PAIS America, the second-round process stopped digitally recording tally sheets and instead moved them physically in diplomatic bags. Sanchez's camp says that change broke the chain of custody and could have affected the result.

The Foreign Ministry rejected the claim of fraud. It said the adjustments were caused by technical problems at consulates and denied that the integrity of the vote was compromised.

The complaint and the accusation

The filing by Juntos por el Peru makes the handling of the vote abroad the central issue. The party argues that the way tally sheets were processed in the second round was altered in a way that created risk around transparency and custody.

Its main contention is that digitalization of the actas was interrupted and that the documents were then transferred physically in diplomatic bags. In the party's view, that is not a minor administrative detail but a change that could affect confidence in the process.

The accusation is especially significant because it concerns the presidential runoff, where every part of the count carries more political weight in a narrow race.

How the dispute escalated

This was not the first public challenge from Roberto Sanchez. On June 18, he had already accused authorities of manipulating the treatment of votes cast by Peruvians abroad and questioned the chain of custody.

Two days later, on June 20, Sanchez announced that he would seek to annul the election and called for new mobilizations. The constitutional complaint filed on June 22 is the latest step in that escalation.

The timeline shows a dispute moving from public accusation to organized legal action. It also suggests that the overseas vote has become one of the main flashpoints in the postelectoral conflict.

The government's response

The Foreign Ministry has rejected the fraud allegation and offered a technical explanation. Its position is that the changes were driven by problems in consulates, not by any attempt to alter or manipulate votes.

That leaves a direct factual dispute at the center of the case: whether the handling of the actas was an emergency workaround for technical failures or a breach of the normal chain of custody.

For now, the case has been framed by competing narratives rather than a formal ruling. The complaint moves the argument into an institutional process where officials will have to decide how to handle it.

Why it matters

The dispute matters because the election was still being counted under a tight margin. EL PAIS reported that, with 99.688% of actas counted, Keiko Fujimori held a lead of about 40,700 votes.

In that context, the overseas vote is not just symbolically important. Even if it is smaller than the domestic tally, it can carry outsized political weight in a race decided by a narrow margin.

The controversy also goes to legitimacy. Sanchez's camp is not only contesting numbers; it is questioning whether the process used to handle foreign ballots was trustworthy.

What comes next

The immediate question is procedural: whether the constitutional complaint will be admitted and by which body it will be handled.

It is also unclear whether Juntos por el Peru will file a formal challenge seeking to annul votes from abroad, as the party continues to press its case.

A public response from Carlos Pareja would add more detail to the government's technical explanation, but none had been confirmed in the research packet.

For now, the dispute remains a live test of Peru's post-election institutions, with the vote abroad, the chain of custody and the legitimacy of the runoff all under scrutiny.