IKN

It’s been pretty obvious for quite some time that the Peru media is out to get Gregorio Santos, regional governor of the Cajamarca region and central figure of the anti-Conga protests that have seen the project put on hold. But even considering the media bias against him, it looks like the story out today will be enough to undermine his position and if Santos goes the whole anti-Conga edifice will crumble.

National newspaper Peru21 (it’s a kinda of semi-scandal paper from the same stable as national benchmark El Comercio) runs this report today of a recorded telephone conversation betwenn A.N. Other and a certain Wilson Vallejos, close associate of Gregorio Santos, in which Vallejos says that he’s the go-between for Santos in a money siphoning scheme. Vallejos, already identified as the beneficiary of a 90 million Soles (U$34.6m) contract from the Cajamarca regional government, said that he0s the one laundering all Santos’s money and that they’d alreadys et up a bank account in Pamana so that Santos could get his share.

Hilarity and fun is sure to ensure.

UPDATE: By popular demand, a translation of the most damning part of the eavesdropped conversation. There’s tons of slang in it, but a fair gist translation is this:

WV, “No, yes, because now I have to give that fool (i.e. Santos) the cash and I’m the one that’s laundering all the money for that fool. Fuck, I’m scared that later on they start screwing with me”
I. “Dude, where are you sending the cash?”
WV: “We’ve already opened an account in the SBS branch in Panama”

And by the way, to all the mining media that will pick up on this story and run with it after reading it here: Just do what you always do and give no credit to IKN and then wonder later why the world hates the way you do business, fucktard dumbasses.

UPDATE: Santos denies everything and says he’s only ever met the guy Vallejos two or three times in his life. And if you think that’ll be the end to this story, I have a bridge you may be interested in. Santos is now a marked man and if Peruvian history tells us anything it tells us that when a government wants to extract a thorn in its side, it does so. Every time.