Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Godard (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾo ˈpaβlo kukˈʃiŋski ɣoˈðaɾð]; born October 3, 1938), better known simply as PPK, is a Peruvian economist, politician and public administrator who was elected as President of Peru in 2016. He served as Prime Minister of Peru from 2005 to 2006.
Kuczynski worked in the United States before entering Peruvian politics. He held positions at both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund before being designated as general manager of Peru's Central Reserve Bank. He later served as Minister of Energy and Mines in the early 1980s under President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, and as Minister of Economy and Finance and Prime Minister under President Alejandro Toledo in the 2000s.
Kuczynski was a presidential candidate in the 2011 presidential election, placing third. His opponents
Ollanta Humala and
Keiko Fujimori went on to the June 5, 2011 runoff election, in which Humala was elected. Kuczynski went on to stand in the 2016 election, where he defeated Keiko Fujimori in the second round.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski speaks to supporters and the media after the release of results showing him as the winner of Peru's presidential runoff. Early life and career before politicsKuczynski was born at the
Clínica Delgado in
Lima,
Peru, the son of
Madeleine Godard, who was of
Swiss-French descent, and German immigrant
Maxime Hans Kuczynski, who was born near
Poznań and was
one of the earliest public health leaders in Peru.
His parents, who were
Jewish, fled
Germany in
1933 to escape
the Nazis. He received his early education at
Markham College in
Lima,
Peru, and
Rossall School in
Lancashire,
England where he was a pupil in
Maltese Cross House between
1953 and
1956. He won a foundation scholarship to study at
Exeter College,
Oxford, and graduated with a degree in
politics,
philosophy and
economics in
1960. Later, he received
the John Parker Compton fellowship to study public affairs at Princeton University in
the United States, where he received
a master's degree in
1961. He began his career at
the World Bank in
1961 as a regional economist for six countries in
Central America,
Haiti and
the Dominican Republic.
In 1967,
Kuczynski returned to
Peru to work at the country's central bank during the government of President Fernando Belaunde Terry. Kuczynski went into exile in the United States in 1969 due to political persecution after Belaunde Terry's government fell to the military dictatorship of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in a coup d'etat. Kuczynski then joined the World Bank as the chief economist managing the northern countries of Latin America, moving on to become
Chief of Policy Planning. From
1973 to
1975, he was a partner of
Kuhn,
Loeb & Co., the international investment bank headquartered in
New York City. In
1975, he returned to
Washington, D.C to become
chief economist for
the International Finance Corporation (
the private finance arm of the World Bank). Subsequently, he was appointed
President of Halco Mining in
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, an
international consortium mining company with operations in West Africa.
From
1983 to
1992, he was
co-chairman of
First Boston in
New York City,
an international investment bank. In
1992, he founded, with six other partners, the
Latin American Enterprise Fund (
LAEF) in
Miami,
Florida, a
private equity firm that
focused on investments in Mexico,
Central and
South America.
The institutional investors in
LAEF included
more than 15 of the world's largest university endowments,
foundations, and
pension funds.
Kuczynski has been a director of various companies in
Peru and elsewhere. Registered in the state of
Florida, he co-owns personal savings vehicle
Westfield Capital and is an officer of office-rental partnership
South Bayshore Properties.
Political careerIn
1980, after the election which named
Fernando Belaúnde Terry as president,
Kuczynski was invited to return to
Peru to serve as
Minister of Energy and Mines. In this position,
he sponsored law 23231 which,
through tax exemptions and other incentives, promoted oil and gas exploration and
exploitation after a period of relative neglect.
Kuczynski resigned in
1982 in order to return to the private sector in
the United States.
Fernando Belaúnde TerryDuring the rest of
the 1980s and
1990s,
Kuczynski was mainly involved in
the private-equity fund-management business in
the United States. He made small personal donations to the presidential campaigns of
George H.W. Bush and of
George W. Bush and to
the state-senator campaign of his wife's cousins in Wisconsin.
George H.W. Bush
George W. BushIn
2000,
Kuczynski joined the presidential campaign of
Alejandro Toledo Manrique, then an economics professor at
the ESAN university in
Lima. After
Toledo was elected president in
2001,
Kuczynski served as
Minister of Economy and Finance from
July 2001 to
July 2002, and again from
February 2004 to
August 2005. In
August 2005, he was appointed as
Prime Minister, a position he held until
Toledo's presidential term expired in
2006.
Alejandro Toledo ManriqueIn
2007,
Manuel Dammert Ego Aguirre, a sociologist and politician, alleged that while he held public office
Kuczynski was involved in facilitating the activities, in various projects in Peru, of a financial entity known as
First Capital Partners, in particular in relation to
the Olmos diversion project, the
Jorge Chávez International Airport,
the Transportadora de Gas, and
the Conrisa consortium. It is true that for a few days former partners of
Kuczynski in
LAEF (above) had ¨
inappropriately and incorrectly¨ listed
Kuczynski as a founding partner of
First Capital. However this ¨
error¨ was corrected within days, and as a consequence
Kuczynski sued
Dammert for defamation and falsification of documents.
Kuczynski's suit was upheld at the first and second instance, but on appeal to Peru's
Supreme Court Dammert's right to ask on matters of public interest was upheld, without ruling on the merits of
Dammert's claims, which have been discussed extensively by
Kuczynski.
Manuel Dammert Ego AguirreAfter working with
the Toledo administration, he founded
Agua Limpia, a Peruvian non-governmental organization
that provides drinking water systems to communities in Peru.
Agua Limpia is supported by the
Inter-American Development Bank,
Scotia Bank of Canada and others.
On
December 1, 2010,
Kuczynski announced that
he would stand as a candidate for President of Peru in the upcoming elections.
Kuczynski ran for
President of Peru in the general election, though he did not pass into the run-off as head of
the Alianza por el Gran Cambio (
Alliance for the Great Change), formed by
the Christian People's Party,
the Alliance for Progress,
the Humanist Party and
the National Restoration Party.
In
2015, he announced that
he would again be running for President, but now with a political party which he had built himself (
Peruanos Por el Kambio).
Kuczynski won 21% of the popular vote in Peru's general elections on April 10 to qualify for a runoff vote against
Keiko Fujimori, in which he narrowly triumphed.
Family and personal life
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as a boyHis father,
Maxime Hans Kuczynski, born in
Poznań,
Poland, part of
Germany at that time
after partition of Poland in 18th century, was
a renowned pathologist and
tropical disease specialist, in particular expert on
Verruga peruana or
Carrion's disease. He trained at the Universities of
Rostock and
Berlin, where
he was professor of pathology. An officer in
the German army on
the Eastern and
Turkish fronts in
the First World War,
he travelled widely in Russia,
China,
West Africa, and
Brazil.
Maxime Hans KuczynskiLeaving Germany in 1933 because of his Jewish roots, he was invited to
Peru in
1936 by
President Óscar R. Benavides to set up
the public health service in
the interior of the country.
Maxime Hans Kuczynski reformed the
San Pablo leprosarium on
the Amazon at
the Brazilian frontier, set up
a public health colony on
the Perene river, and was later
professor of tropical medicine at
National University of San Marcos in
Lima.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as a childPedro Pablo Kuczynski Godard has been married twice, first to
Jane Dudley Casey (daughter of Joseph E. Casey, member of the U.S. House for the 3rd district of Massachusetts), their offspring being corporate executive and technology entrepreneur,
Carolina Madeleine Kuczynski, the journalist
Alex Kuczynski, and
John-Michael Kuczynski. His current wife is
Nancy Lange, with whom he has had a daughter. Kuczynski's younger brother
Miguel Jorge is a fellow of
Pembroke College,
Cambridge; and their first cousin is
Jean-Luc Godard, the renowned French-Swiss film director.
Kuczynski's brother-in-law
Harold Varmus received the Nobel Prize for cancer research in 1989.
Alex Kuczynski, Pedro Kuczynski's daughter
Nancy Lange Kuczynski, his second and present wife
