When police swooped to arrest Alan Garcia, the former Peruvian president embroiled in a corruption case, he shot himself in the head before he could be detained. Garcia, 69, wanted over a multinational bribery scandal involving Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, had been treated in hospital for “a bullet wound to his head,” the BBC reports. He was far from the first high profile politician to be caught up in the Odebrecht scandal, one of the biggest of its kind that the world has ever seen. In Peru itself, all but one living former head of state is being investigated for corruption tied to Odebrecht. Lula is in prison over a separate bribery scandal involving Petrobas and OAS, an engineering outfit.

Source: National Post April 17, 2019 16:01 UTC