Demartini requests security boost after audio suggests plot to remove him from office

Julio Demartini, Peru's Minister of Social Development, walked into the Interior Ministry last week with a specific request: strengthen his security detail. The reason was sitting in prosecutors' hands—a 25-minute audio recording that suggested powerful people in government wanted him gone.

The recording surfaced on January 26 when the television program Cuarto Poder broadcast a conversation between Carlos Guillén, described as someone close to President Dina Boluarte's circle, and a woman seeking to become a cooperating witness in the Qali Warma corruption case. In the audio, Guillén speaks plainly about political housecleaning. "The aunt wants to restructure everything," he says, using Boluarte's family nickname. "Clean everything. Make Demartini disappear. You've seen there are other political interests." Later in the same conversation, he returns to the point: "We simply want to flip Demartini, flip all of Qali Warma, and cut off the heads of the uncle and the other uncle."

Demartini did not dismiss the threat as political theater. In an interview with Milagros Leiva's program on Willax television, he explained his reasoning with careful precision. Ministers of state receive standard security by virtue of their office, he said, but these recordings changed the calculation. "I haven't asked for guarantees for my life, and I want to be clear about that," he stated. "What I have asked the Interior Ministry to do is reinforce the security I already have, given these declarations and these audios. We're not talking about small things. The investigations will continue. But we're seeing in these conversations an intention—and we don't know if it's an intention against my physical integrity or my dignity. I also have a family to think about."

Juan Peña, Demartini's lawyer, had already signaled the security request to Canal N on January 27, even as the audio was still reverberating through Lima's political circles. Peña was careful not to overstate but also not to minimize. He rejected any suggestion that his client might resign. "He has no possibility of resigning, at least not for now," Peña said. "He is focused entirely on his work as a minister of state." But on the substance of the threat, Peña was direct: the phrase "flip him" or "knock him down" could be interpreted many ways, and when the Public Ministry hears language like that, institutions have a duty to warn and protect. "He doesn't have fear, but he does have to take precautions," Peña explained. "When institutions see any kind of threat, the minimum they have to do is give notice so someone can take life precautions."

The audio itself carries weight beyond the immediate threat to one minister. It was recorded on December 18—a week before Nilo Burga, the former head of Frigoinca's board, died under circumstances that remain contested. In the conversation, Guillén references Burga and suggests the government now wants to "bury" the matter. The recording has landed with prosecutors investigating the Qali Warma case, a sprawling corruption scandal involving school meal programs. The audio hints at connections between Demartini and the Gambrino family, suggesting investigators may be looking at a wider network of relationships and interests.

What emerges from the recording is not a single plot but a portrait of government under strain. Guillén speaks of power struggles, of officials playing both sides, of the need to "break" things and people who have become inconvenient. Demartini, by his own account in the audio, has been caught between competing loyalties—to Boluarte and to someone referred to as "Morgan." The minister's request for enhanced security is, in one sense, a small administrative matter. In another sense, it is a public acknowledgment that Peru's government is fracturing along lines of personal loyalty and political survival, and that those fractures can turn dangerous.