“The former mayor of Venezuela's second largest city had been in hiding since the charges were filed in March,” reports BBC.

“Venezuelan officials say Rosales illegally enriched himself as governor of Zulia state from 2002 to 2004,” writes CNN. According to The Washington Post, “Prosecutors called for Rosales's arrest in March on charges of illicit enrichment, and lawmakers in the National Assembly have opened a probe to determine the source of [US]$60,000 that Rosales made while governor of the oil-rich state of Zulia. Rosales was elected mayor of Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia, in November but stepped down last month in the wake of the government's investigation.”

Rosales has rejected the graft charges and says “he is being politically persecuted by Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez”, according to AFP.

Bloomberg reports that: “Opponents of the government have also been targeted by the legislature and by government appointees over the past year. Ahead of the November regional elections, the former mayor of Chacao, Lopez, was banned from running again for any public office by the government’s comptroller general, an anti- corruption watchdog.”

“Rosales ran afoul of Chavez after he was linked to the 2002 attempted coup against the leftist leader. Chavez accused Rosales in October of plotting to assassinate him, and threatened to have him jailed,” claims AFP.

Mario Isea, a lawmaker in the National Assembly and a member of Chavez’s socialist party, said that “Rosales isn’t being persecuted,” reports Bloomberg.

"This citizen is being investigated by Venezuelan justice for crimes outlined in the anti-corruption law," said Venezuela's justice minister Tareck El Aissami (Washington Post).

On 24 April Interpol, an international intelligence agency, issued an arrest warrant for Rosales.

However, Rosales’ Peruvian attorney, Javier Valle Riestra, told AFP that Interpol cannot arrest his client because it “is forbidden from intervening in cases of politics, race or religion.”

In response to news that Rosales was granted political asylum in Peru, Venezuela’s foreign ministry said that it was “recalling its ambassador in Lima and evaluating its diplomatic relations with Peru,” according to Associated Press.

Rosales was the main opposition candidate in the 2006 presidential election, which he lost to Chavez.

Photo - Alejandro Alarcon