LIMA, Peru (AP) — A TV talk-show queen has been ordered released from house arrest after three years of detention in a corruption scandal surrounding Peru’s imprisoned former spy chief.
Laura Bozzo is still facing charges that she accepted $3 million from Vladimiro Montesinos to support former President Alberto Fujimori’s fraud-plagued re-election campaign.
A court tribunal ruled, however, that the blonde star of the NBC Telemundo networks program “Laura” would be free on her own recognizance as of today.
Miss Bozzo, 53, testified in April that she was hopelessly in love with Montesinos, but has denied she took bribes from him to slant her program.
“I am absolutely confident that being innocent and having proven it, there will be no other alternative but to declare my absolution and innocence,” Miss Bozzo said later.
Since her July 17, 2002, arrest, Miss Bozzo has taped her Spanish-language show from a Lima studio turned gilded cage, offering tales of incest, infidelity, teen pregnancy and prostitution.
She is one of Spanish-language television’s top-rated stars in the United States and much of Latin America, but not Peru, where the program was canceled after Mr. Fujimori fled to Japan in November 2000 and Montesinos, now serving a 15-year sentence, was captured in Venezuela the following year.
Miss Bozzo faces up to seven years in prison and a maximum $6 million fine if convicted.
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