Kuczynski Godard, Pedro Pablo, 1938–, Peruvian economist and political leader, president of Peru (2016–18), grad. Oxford (B.A. 1960), Princeton (M.A., 1961). He was an economist with the World Bank and Peru's central bank before he went into exile after a military coup (1968); he then worked for the World Bank in the United States. In 1980 he was named energy and mining minister by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry. After two decades (from 1982) with investment banking and private equity firms, he served under President Alejandro Toledo Manrique as economy and finance minister (2001–2, 2004–5) and prime minister (2005–6). A member of the center-right Peruvians for Change party, Kuczynski mounted an unsuccessful bid for president in 2011 then won the office in 2016, defeating Keiko Fujimori in a runoff. Revelations in 2017 that Odebrecht-related businesses (see Odebrecht corruption scandal) had made payments, previously denied by Kuczynski, to him or businesses he owned, led to an unsuccessful attempt by Fujimori's party to impeach him. Kuczynski then pardoned former president Alberto Fujimori, in a move widely criticized as a politcal deal. He resigned in 2018 after a second impeachment attempt appeared likely to succeed. In 2019 he was arrested in connection with the Obebrecht bribery investigation.
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