Executive Summary
Peru regulates advocacy before the State under the name gestión de intereses (“interest management”). Since its amendment in 2017, Article 1 of Law No. 28024 defines it expressly as una actividad lícita de promoción de intereses legítimos propios o de terceros (“a lawful activity promoting one’s own legitimate interests or those of third parties”). —Any assertion that lobbying is prohibited in Peru is wrong as a matter of black-letter law.
That is, however, where the resemblance to the United States model ends. The Peruvian regime is not a lighter version of the Lobbying Disclosure Act. It is a structurally different instrument built on an inverted premise, and the practical consequence for a US investor is that most of what a Washington government-relations budget buys cannot lawfully be bought in Lima.
The five findings that matter to a foreign investor
- The regulated subject is the official, not the advocate. Peru’s disclosure architecture places the entire recording burden on the public officer, who must log the act of interest management personally and non-delegably (Art. 16.2). The private advocate registers nothing, files nothing, and — since the 2017 repeals — is subject to no administrative sanction whatsoever. There is no Peruvian equivalent of an LD-1 or LD-2.
- There is no lobbyist to be. Peru has no register, no accreditation, no licence, no bar, no disclosure of fees and no public list of who lobbies for whom. A firm cannot hold itself out as a ‘registered lobbyist’ in Peru because the status does not exist. This is a deregulated space, not a licensed profession.
- The advocacy toolkit is prohibited, item by item. Meetings must occur inside the institution’s premises during working hours; gifts, hospitality, free services and offers of employment are barred and the prohibition extends to the official’s spouse and relatives to the fourth degree of consanguinity; kinship to that same degree disqualifies the advocate outright; a one-year cooling-off applies to former officials and a three-year reverse cooling-off to private-sector entrants; and — decisively for a US corporate — foreign for-profit legal persons and foreign natural persons are absolutely barred from contributing to Peruvian political organizations.
- The enforcement gap is filled by criminal law. Because the administrative sanctioning regime for advocates was repealed and never replaced, the only real deterrent facing the private side is the Penal Code — principally trading in influence (Art. 400), but also collusion, bribery, incompatible negotiation and false sworn declaration. Corporate criminal exposure attaches under Law No. 30424 for bribery, collusion, trading in influence, money laundering and terrorist financing, and it applies expressly to foreign legal persons.
- The 2026 landscape has reset. A new administration took office on 28 July 2026; Congress became bicameral on 24–27 July 2026 after thirty-three years of unicameralism; the Public Integrity Secretariat issued a new operative directive on 21 July 2026; and Peru is the most advanced Latin American candidate in the OECD accession process, with integrity and anti-bribery among its live evaluation chapters. Every institutional map drawn before July 2026 is obsolete.
The strategic conclusion rests on firm ground: a US investor can lawfully and effectively advocate in Peru, but only through a radical-transparency model in which the technical merit of the submission is the entire strategy, and in which the client independently verifies the public record because the consultant has no filing obligation to verify against.
Part One — The Central Proposition
1.1 Two different things share one English word
English-language commentary tends to treat ‘lobbying’ as a single, portable concept. It is not. In the United States, lobbying denotes a licensed-adjacent profession organized around registration, quarterly financial disclosure, political contribution, relationship capital and coalition management. In Peru, gestión de intereses denotes a discrete communicative act — oral or written, by any medium — directed at an official with public decision-making capacity for the purpose of influencing a specific public decision.
The Peruvian concept has no professional infrastructure attached to it. It is an act, not a career. That single distinction explains most of what follows.
1.2 The inversion: Peru regulates the receiver, the United States regulates the sender
This is the structural key, and it is the point most often missed in comparative commentary. Under the LDA, the regulated person is the lobbyist and the lobbying registrant; the government’s role is to host the filings. Under applicable Peruvian law, the regulated person is the public official; the private party’s only substantive duty is to tell the truth on the way in.
Peruvian law provides that the information supplied by the visitor to the entity for the Visits Register has the character of a sworn statement (declaración jurada). The Peruvian official, when in communication with an interest manager, must leave a record of the fact and its detail — a responsibility that is expressly personal and non-delegable, and which administrative assistance does not transfer. Where an official detects an act of interest management that the visitor failed to declare, the official has a duty to record that omission in the register.
Table 2 — Where the legal duty sits
| Duty | United States (LDA) | Peruvian Law |
| Register as an actor | Yes — registrant and named lobbyists | None. No register exists |
| Report activity periodically | Yes — LD-2 quarterly; LD-203 semi-annually | None for the private side |
| Disclose fees or expenditure | Yes — good-faith estimates, rounded | Not required of anyone |
| Record the individual contact | No per-meeting log | Yes — by the official, per act, personal and non-delegable |
| Truthfulness obligation on the private party | Certification on filings | Sworn-statement character of the visitor’s declaration |
| Administrative penalty on the advocate | Civil penalties up to USD 200,000; criminal exposure | None — repealed in 2017 and not replaced |
Table 2. Illustrates the mirror-image design of the two systems.
1.3 What ‘limited or prohibited’ correctly means
Three propositions, stated in the order a foreign board will need them:
- The activity is lawful. Promoting a legitimate interest before the administration is expressly lawful, and it is anchored in the constitutional rights of petition, opinion and participation. No permission is needed and none can be obtained, because no permitting authority exists.
- The profession does not exist. There is no status, no register, no accreditation and no recognised standing as a lobbyist. A consultant offering ‘registered lobbying services in Peru’ is either mis-describing the service or describing something else entirely.
- The methods are prohibited. Almost every operational technique that defines US practice — the working lunch, the gift, the campaign contribution, the ex-minister hired to open doors, the success fee tied to a legislative outcome, the relative on the inside — is expressly prohibited, criminally exposed, or both.
A US investor should therefore expect a paradox: Peru will ask for less paperwork than Washington, and permit far less conduct.
Part Two — The Legal Architecture in Force
2.1 The instruments
Law No. 28024 of 2003 remains the framework statute, but it must never be read in its original form. It has been amended twice by legislative decree, and roughly a third of its articles have been repealed. The operative detail now lives in the 2019 regulation and in a directive issued three weeks before the date of this article.
Table 3 — Normative framework in force (August 2026)
| Instrument | Content relevant to advocacy | Status / date |
| Law No. 28024 | Framework statute. Defines interest management as a lawful activity; lists decision-makers (Art. 5) and public decisions (Art. 4); sets exclusions (Art. 3), incompatibilities (Art. 9), the Visits Register (Art. 16) and the ban on liberalities (Art. 17). | In force as amended; original Arts. 8, 11–15, 19–21 repealed |
| Legislative Decree No. 1353 | Amended Arts. 1, 7 and 16; repealed the SUNARP registry, the categories of lobbyist, the lobbyist reporting duty, lobbyist sanctions and the special tribunal. | 7 January 2017 |
| Legislative Decree No. 1415 | Amended Art. 5 (decision-makers) and Art. 16 (Visits Register and Official Agendas); introduced preventive registers (Art. 16-A). | 13 September 2018 |
| Supreme Decree No. 120-2019-PCM | Current regulation. Five titles, nineteen articles. Defines the act of interest management, the two registers, the officials’ duties, and the ethics guidelines binding on advocates (Art. 18). | In force since 2019; repealed D.S. 099-2003-PCM |
| Directive No. 003-2026-PCM/SIP | Operative rules for the Visits Register and Official Agendas Register: roles, control points, late entries, rectifications, observations and internal annotations. | Approved 21 July 2026 by Res. 008-2026-PCM/SIP; replaced Directive 001-2022-PCM/SIP |
| Law No. 27815 | Code of Ethics of the Public Function — principles and prohibitions binding on officials receiving advocacy. | In force |
| Law No. 31564 and D.S. 082-2023-PCM | Revolving door in both directions. Bars former officials from performing interest management towards entities within their former functional competence; imposes three-year impediments on private-sector entrants. | In force |
| Law No. 30424 (as amended by Laws 30835 and 31740) and D.S. 002-2025-JUS | Corporate criminal-administrative liability for bribery, collusion, trading in influence, money laundering and terrorist financing; prevention model as an exemption. | Regulation updated 25 February 2025 |
| Law No. 32254 | Political financing. Restored contributions by national for-profit legal persons; maintains an absolute ban on foreign natural persons and foreign for-profit legal persons. | 31 January 2025 |
| Law No. 32301 and D.S. 033-2025-RE | APCI regime for internationally-funded entities: prior conformity, expanded infringements, fines up to 500 UIT. | Promulgated 14 April 2025; sanctions regulation Sept 2025; disapplied inter partes Jan 2026 |
| Penal Code | Arts. 384 (collusion), 385 (unlawful patronage), 393–398 (bribery), 399 (incompatible negotiation), 400 (trading in influence), 411 (false sworn statement). | In force |
Table 3. Investors should verify the current status of Law 32301, which remains under constitutional challenge.
2.2 What the 2017 repeals removed
The significance of Legislative Decree No. 1353 is not that it tightened the regime. It is that it deleted the entire private-facing half of it. Peru moved from a licensing-and-reporting model, which had failed in practice, to a real-time transparency model that depends wholly on the public official’s compliance.
Table 4 — The 2003 model against the model in force
| Element | Law 28024 as enacted (2003) | In force (2026) |
| Lobbyist register | Public Register of Interest Management at SUNARP; registration a precondition to acting (Arts. 11–12) | Repealed. No register of any kind |
| Categories of lobbyist | Professional manager vs. own-interest manager (Art. 8) | Repealed. A single undifferentiated figure (Art. 7) |
| Periodic reporting by the advocate | Reports by the professional manager (Art. 14) | Repealed. No filing obligation |
| Sanctions on the advocate | Administrative sanctions (Art. 19) | Repealed. None |
| Adjudicating body | Special Administrative Tribunal (Art. 20) | Repealed. Abolished |
| Sanctioning power | Conferred by Art. 21 | Repealed |
| Disclosure mechanism | Registration of the actor and of acts | Real-time Visits Register and Official Agendas, maintained by the entity |
| Governing authority | SUNARP and the Public Management Secretariat | Public Integrity Secretariat of the PCM (D.S. 120-2019-PCM, Art. 2.2) |
Table 4. The practical effect: a Peruvian consultant genuinely has nothing to register. That is a feature of the law, not evidence of evasion.
2.3 Where the record actually lives
Two platforms carry the disclosure burden. The Registro de Visitas en Línea publishes, in real time and in open reusable data format, the visits received by public servants together with the substance of any act of interest management attended (D.S. 120-2019-PCM, Art. 3.9). The Registro de Agendas Oficiales publishes the official activities of senior officials and is the place where any act of interest management exceptionally attended outside institutional premises must be annotated (Art. 3.10).
The consolidated public consultation point is the State’s visits platform (visitas.servicios.gob.pe), supplemented by each entity’s Standard Transparency Portal. Directive No. 003-2026-PCM/SIP of 21 July 2026 now governs how entities operate both platforms, including the fields for observations, late entries and rectifications — fields that a diligent client should read, because they are where irregularity becomes visible.
2.4 A significant jurisdictional limit
Law 28024 does not extend to the jurisdictional functions of the Judiciary, to constitutionally autonomous bodies in the exercise of those functions, or to the authorities and tribunals before which administrative proceedings are conducted (Art. 1; D.S. 120-2019-PCM, Art. 2.3). Advocacy before a tax tribunal, a procurement tribunal or a court is therefore not interest management — it is litigation, governed by procedural law and by the professional rules of the bar.
This boundary is frequently misused. It is examined in Part Five, because the line between ‘legal defense’ and ‘interest management’ is precisely where a foreign client is most likely to be given comfortable advice that will not survive a prosecutor’s reading.
Part Three — Scope: Who, What, and What Is Excluded
3.1 Who counts as a decision-maker
Article 5.1 of Law 28024, as amended by Legislative Decree 1415, enumerates the officials whose contacts are captured. The list reaches elected local government in its entirety.
Table 5 — Officials with public decision-making capacity (Art. 5.1)
| Category | Detail |
| Presidency | President of the Republic; First and Second Vice-Presidents when in charge of the presidential office |
| Legislature | Members of Congress — since 24 July 2026, both senators and deputies |
| Ministerial tier | Ministers, vice-ministers, secretaries general, national and general directors, prefects and sub-prefects, counsellors, advisors and officials of equivalent rank |
| Judiciary (administrative) | President and members of the Executive Council of the Judiciary, including its General Manager |
| Regional government | Regional governors and vice-governors when in charge, members of Regional Councils, and regional managers |
| Local government | Mayors, councillors and directors of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima and of all provincial and district municipalities |
| State enterprises | Chair and members of the boards of State-owned enterprises, and their general managers |
| Budget holders and trust posts | Heads of budget units of covered entities, and any official or servant in a position of trust, where applicable |
| TUPA-designated | Those designated by each body through its Single Text of Administrative Procedures |
| Residual | In general, officials with public decision-making capacity as determined by the regulation |
Table 5. Each entity’s highest administrative authority must identify and publish the officials falling within the discretionary categories — a list that must be reconstituted across the State following the July 2026 transition.
3.2 What counts as a public decision
Article 4 defines a public decision as any process by which the administration establishes policies or takes decisions of any nature having economic, social or political significance, individual or collective, or affecting interests across sectors. It then enumerates nine processes.
Table 6 — Processes constituting a public decision (Art. 4)
| No. | Process |
| 1 | Study of bills by the Ordinary, Special and Permanent Committees of Congress |
| 2 | Debate on committee reports and the approval, observation, promulgation and repeal of statutes |
| 3 | Drafting, approval and promulgation of legislative decrees and urgency decrees, and their repeal |
| 4 | Formation and promulgation of supreme decrees, supreme resolutions, ministerial, vice-ministerial and directoral resolutions, and their repeal |
| 5 | Drafting, adoption or approval of policies, programmes, projects and institutional positions |
| 6 | The conclusion of agreements and contracts |
| 7 | Drafting, approval or repeal of resolutions by heads of public bodies |
| 8 | Drafting, approval or repeal of regional ordinances, regional council agreements, regional decrees and resolutions, and municipal ordinances, decrees and resolutions |
| 9 | Internal administration acts of the organs of public entities, as provided in the regulation |
Table 6. Item 6 is the item that matters most for return-on-investment advocacy: contract and concession formation is squarely inside the regime — and squarely inside the criminal perimeter of collusion.
3.3 What is excluded
Article 3 lists seven categories that do not constitute interest management, and Article 5 of the 2019 regulation adds six more. Together they define the safe perimeter — and the trap.
Table 7 — Statutory and regulatory exclusions
| Source | Excluded conduct | Practical reading |
| Art. 3(1)–(2) | Declarations, testimony, commentary in speeches, articles or publications; dissemination of news or material to the public at large through media | Public argument is free. Op-eds, position papers and press comment are outside the regime |
| Art. 3(3) | Information supplied to the administration in response to a request made by it | If the agency asks, the answer is not lobbying — keep the written request on file |
| Art. 3(4)–(5) | Information given through media in exercise of freedom of expression; statements at any public meeting | Public hearings and open fora are outside the regime |
| Art. 3(6) | The free exercise of legal defense and advice, within the bounds of the legal order | The most-used and most-abused exclusion — see Part Five |
| Art. 3(7) | Other similar steps that do not lead to a decision by the administration | Residual |
| Reg. Art. 5(b)–(d) | Official protocol acts; requests for information and meeting requests not themselves intended to influence; participation, at the administration’s invitation, in consultative councils, multisectoral commissions or working groups | Invited participation in a technical working group is not interest management. Obtain the invitation in writing |
| Reg. Art. 5(e)–(f) | Internal administration acts not leading to a public decision; opinions requested by the entity | Solicited opinions are excluded |
Table 7. Note also the second paragraph of Article 3: public officials are themselves prohibited from performing acts of interest management for interests other than institutional or State interests.
Part Four — The Seven Structural Constraints
This Part contains the substance of the proposition that US-style lobbying is limited or prohibited in Peru. Taken individually, each constraint is a rule. Taken together, they remove the operational basis of the American model.
Table 8 — The instruments of US lobbying, tested against Peruvian law
| US instrument | Available in Peru? | Peruvian legal treatment |
| Registering as a lobbyist and holding out that status | No | No register, no accreditation, no licence. The status does not exist in law (Arts. 11–12 repealed, 2017) |
| Corporate or PAC contributions to campaigns | Prohibited for foreign investors | Law 32254 bars contributions from foreign natural persons and foreign for-profit legal persons absolutely. National for-profit companies may contribute up to 200 UIT per organization per year, 500 UIT in aggregate |
| Meals, hospitality, travel, event tickets | Prohibited | Art. 17 bans acceptance of any liberality — gifts, donations, free services, offers of posts or employment. The 2019 regulation (Art. 18(d)) mirrors the ban on the advocate’s side, before and after the act |
| Meeting off-site: restaurants, clubs, retreats | Prohibited by default | Art. 16.3 prohibits officials from attending acts of interest management outside institutional premises. Exceptionally permitted only if programmed and reasoned in advance and annotated in the Official Agendas Register |
| Hiring a former official to open doors | Prohibited within cooling-off | Art. 9(b) of Law 28024; Art. 8(g) of D.S. 082-2023-PCM expressly prohibits ex-officials from performing interest management for companies within their former functional competence |
| Using family relationships | Prohibited outright | Art. 9(e) of Law 28024 and Art. 18(e) of the regulation disqualify the advocate where kinship extends to the fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity |
| Contingency / success fees tied to an outcome | Lawful but high-risk | Fee freedom is the civil rule, but a large outcome-contingent payment tied to a regulatory or legislative result is an evidentiary red flag for both tax and criminal authorities |
| Media-owner or media-executive advocates | Prohibited | Art. 9(d) disqualifies owners and directors of national or foreign media outlets from acting as interest managers, save for their own interests |
| Grassroots and public campaigning | Available | Excluded from the regime by Art. 3(1)–(5). Public argument remains free — this is the one American technique that transfers cleanly |
| Quiet, unrecorded access | Prohibited | The official must record the act personally; the visitor’s declaration is a sworn statement; the official must record any omission by the visitor |
Table 8. Nine of ten instruments are unavailable, prohibited or materially constrained.
4.1 The venue rule
Article 16.3, as amended in 2018, prohibits officials from attending acts of interest management outside institutional premises. The 2019 regulation (Art. 9(d)) restates it and confines the exception to meetings programmed and duly reasoned in advance, with the fact recorded in the Official Agendas Register. Article 18(g) of the regulation binds the advocate to the same discipline: meetings are to be held within the official’s working hours and at the institutional premises.
The consequence is that the entire off-site infrastructure of American practice — the breakfast, the conference dinner, the golf day, the ‘informal catch-up’ — is not merely poor practice in Peru. It is a documented violation by the official and, evidentially, the single most damaging fact a prosecutor can put in front of a court, because under Peruvian law clandestinity is the element that distinguishes criminal influence-peddling from lawful advocacy.
4.2 The liberality rule
Article 17 prohibits covered officials from accepting, directly or indirectly, any liberality from interest managers or from the third parties they represent. The prohibition expressly includes gifts, donations, free services and offers of posts or employment, and it extends to the official’s spouse and to relatives to the fourth degree of consanguinity and second of affinity.
Article 18(d) of the 2019 regulation places the corresponding duty on the advocate: to abstain from promising or granting benefits of any kind, providing services or delivering goods to covered officials or to their spouse, partner or relatives within those degrees — and it applies before and after the act of interest management, closing the deferred-gratitude route.
Article 18 of the Law sets out narrow exceptions: lawful contributions to electoral campaigns under the applicable legislation; legacies and donations to State entities; informational materials such as books, journals and documents, and training including transport, accommodation and meals where duly substantiated and approved by the entity’s budget holder; awards and commemorative items of purely honorary value; and promotional samples of minimal value.
| The campaign-contribution exception is a trap for foreign investors
Article 18(1) exempts lawful campaign contributions from the definition of a liberality. For a US corporate entity, there is no such thing. Law No. 32254 of 31 January 2025 restored contributions by national for-profit legal persons but preserved an absolute prohibition on contributions from foreign natural persons and foreign for-profit legal persons, in cash or in kind, direct or indirect, including through third parties, related persons or corporate structures. The only foreign contributions permitted are from foreign non-profit legal persons, exclusively for training, capacity-building and research. A contribution routed through a Peruvian subsidiary in order to reach the domestic-company allowance would invite scrutiny as an indirect foreign contribution. |
4.3 Kinship and incompatibility
Article 9 disqualifies from acting as an interest manager: (i) persons suspended in the exercise of citizenship; (ii) public officials during their functions and for twelve months afterwards in matters of their direct functional competence; (iii) natural persons and representatives of private legal persons who sit honorarily on collegiate bodies of the administration; (iv) owners and directors of national or foreign media outlets and their companies; (v) and the spouse and relatives to the fourth degree of consanguinity and second of affinity of officials, in respect of matters within the official’s direct functional competence or exclusive decision-making responsibility.
For the third and fourth categories, no incompatibility arises where the interest managed is the person’s own.
4.4 The revolving door, in both directions
Law No. 31564 and its regulation, Supreme Decree No. 082-2023-PCM, are the most under-appreciated element of the framework by foreign investors, because they impose obligations on the hiring company, not only on the individual hired.
Article 8 of the regulation lists seven impediments applying to former officials in respect of private companies over which they held or hold direct functional competence: providing services under any labour or contractual arrangement; accepting remunerated or honorary representations; sitting on the board or holding a management post, including in affiliated entities; acquiring shares directly or indirectly; concluding civil or commercial contracts; intervening as lawyer, attorney, advisor, sponsor, expert or arbitrator in proceedings pending with the same State department; and — expressly — performing acts of interest management for those companies.
Table 9 — Cooling-off periods under Law 31564 / D.S. 082-2023-PCM
| Subject | Period | Scope |
| Elected officials and officials with regulated designation (President, legislators, governors, mayors, councillors; Contralor, TC magistrates, JNJ, BCRP, SBS and similar) | Tenure plus one year | Private companies nationwide over which direct functional competence existed |
| Freely designated officials, directors and public servants, and State-enterprise personnel | Tenure plus a period equal to time served, capped at one year where service exceeded one year | Same |
| Any former official, as to specific matters personally handled | Permanent | Acting as lawyer, attorney, advisor, sponsor, expert or arbitrator in those specific cases |
| Private-sector entrants: holders of more than 1% of shares; directors, legal representatives, attorneys, advisors and consultants; officers of associations, foundations and NGOs | Three years after leaving the private role | Barred from acting as decision-maker, board member, consultant or advisor in public entities whose functional scope covers their former company |
Table 9. The regulation also requires each entity to publish and update, on the first working day of each month, the list of covered public-sector subjects — the primary due-diligence source before retaining any interest management advisor.
Two operational consequences follow. First, a sworn declaration on prohibitions and incompatibilities is an indispensable precondition to contracting with a public entity, and at least ten per cent of such declarations must be reviewed each half-year by the entity’s Integrity Office; filing one containing inexact or false information is classified as a serious infringement. Second, a contract with an ex-official inside the cooling-off period is generally ‘void for illicit object’. This phrase is directionally right. The rule, however, stated more precisely, is that the impediment is statutory and the arrangement is unlawful, but the consequences run through the disciplinary and criminal regimes and through Article V of the Civil Code, and the analysis is fact-specific.
Part Five — The Criminal Perimeter
5.1 Trading in influence (Article 400)
The offense punishes a person who, invoking or holding real or simulated influence, receives, causes to be given or causes to be promised, for himself or a third party, a gift, promise or any other advantage or benefit, in exchange for the offer to intercede with a public official or servant who is to hear, is hearing or has heard a judicial or administrative case. The basic offense carries four to six years’ imprisonment, disqualification and fine-days. And where the agent is a public official or servant, four to eight years.
Three features drive the risk for a foreign client. The offense is a common offense, committed by anyone. It is a crime of danger: neither the reality of the influence nor any change in the official’s decision is required. And under Supreme Court Plenary Agreement No. 3-2015/CJ-116, the buyer of influence — the interested party — answers as an instigator where he has created or reinforced the seller’s will to trade influence. The Supreme Court has also held, and the Constitutional Court has confirmed, that invoking simulated influence is consistent with the principle of harm, because the conduct is objectively apt, viewed ex ante, to endanger the reputation and standing of the public administration.
| A limitation that is routinely overstated in commentary
Article 400 requires a judicial or administrative case that the official is to hear, is hearing or has heard. Pure normative advocacy — persuading a ministry to change a policy, or a committee to amend a bill — does not naturally fit that element. It does not follow that legislative advocacy is safe. It follows that the risk migrates: to active bribery under Articles 397 and 398, to collusion under Article 384 where public contracting is involved, to incompatible negotiation under Article 399, and to false sworn declaration under Article 411 in respect of the Visits Register entry. |
5.2 The offenses that surround the advocacy relationship
Table 10 — Adjacent criminal exposure
| Article | Offense | Relevance to advocacy |
| 384 | Collusion (simple and aggravated) | The principal risk in contracting, concessions and public–private partnerships. Engages corporate liability under Law 30424 |
| 385 | Unlawful patronage | Targets the official who uses his position to patronize private interests before the administration — the mirror risk of an over-close relationship |
| 397 / 397-A / 398 | Active generic, transnational and specific bribery | Anything of value offered to secure or reward an act. The transnational form is the direct counterpart of the FCPA |
| 399 | Incompatible negotiation | The official who takes an interest, personally or through an intermediary, in a contract or operation he intervenes in |
| 400 | Trading in influence | Both the seller and the instructing buyer. Engages corporate liability |
| 411 | False statement in administrative proceedings | Directly engaged by the sworn-statement character of the Visits Register declaration under Art. 16.1 |
Table 10. Bribery, collusion, trading in influence, money laundering and terrorist financing are the offenses that trigger corporate liability under Law No. 30424.
5.3 Corporate liability and the prevention model
Law No. 30424, as amended by Law No. 30835 and Law No. 31740, holds legal persons — expressly including foreign legal persons — administratively liable in criminal proceedings for bribery, collusion, trading in influence, money laundering and terrorist financing committed by partners, directors, de facto or de jure administrators, legal representatives, attorneys, and persons under their authority or control. Article 12 provides an exemption where the entity had adopted and implemented, before the offense, a prevention model adequate to its nature, risks, needs and characteristics. The implementing regulation was amended by Supreme Decree No. 002-2025-JUS on 25 February 2025 to align it with Law 31740.
For a US investor the practical point is that the Peruvian prevention model and the FCPA compliance program should be a single documented system with a Peru-specific interest-management module — covering the venue rule, the liberality ban, the kinship screen, the cooling-off check and the monthly verification of the public record.
5.4 The ‘legal defense’ exclusion and where it fails
Article 3(6) excludes the free exercise of legal defense and advice within the bounds of the legal order. The exclusion is genuine and it is broad on its face — it covers asesoría (“advice”), not only litigation. But it is bounded by function, not by the professional identity of the person invoking it.
The workable test is whether the communication is addressed to the resolution of a pending matter under the applicable procedural rules, or to the shaping of a discretionary decision by an official with decision-making capacity. Filing a brief in a tax dispute is legal defense. Meeting the vice-minister to argue that the regulation underlying the dispute should be amended is interest management, and it must be recorded as such.
For a foreign multinational, the asymmetry of consequence is severe. A local advisor who mischaracterizes a meeting as legal advice faces, in practice, no administrative penalty — because none exists. The client’s exposure is entirely different: reputational, FCPA-adjacent, and, if a benefit passed, criminal. Prevalent local practice is not a defense, and the specialized anti-corruption prosecutors do not treat it as one.
Part Six — Foreign-Funded Advocacy and the APCI Regime
6.1 What Law No. 32301 did
Congress approved the amendment of the law creating the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation on March 12, 2025; it was promulgated on April 14, 2025. Its principal effects are the requirement that entities managing non-reimbursable international technical cooperation obtain prior conformity from APCI for their activities, an expanded catalogue of infringements — including the use of cooperation resources to advise, assist or finance administrative or judicial actions against the Peruvian State — and substantially increased sanctions. The Regulation of Infringements and Sanctions approved by Supreme Decree No. 033-2025-RE provides for fines of up to 500 UIT, temporary suspension of registration benefits, and cancellation. As of the time of this writing, a UIT or Tax Unit is equivalent to USD 1,570.00.
6.2 Its contested status
The law has been litigated continuously since promulgation. An amparo (“constitutional challenge”) brought by the Instituto de Defensa Legal was admitted in May 2025 and heard in September 2025; on January 14, 2026 the Sixth Constitutional Court of Lima upheld it in part and declared the law inapplicable to that specific claimant, setting aside the prior-conformity requirement and the new sanctions and organizational regulations as applied to it. The decision binds only the parties. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held a thematic hearing on the law on July 21, 2025. As of the date of this article the Constitutional Court had not ruled on the law in abstract constitutional review, and the statute remains in force generally.
6.3 Why a commercial investor should care
The regime is aimed at civil-society organizations, and a commercial investor advocating with its own funds is outside its natural scope. Three transmission mechanisms nonetheless warrant attention:
- Advisor contamination. Where the Peruvian firm, NGO or think-tank retained also receives international technical cooperation funds, its APCI standing becomes a live counterparty risk. Confirm in the engagement that no cooperation funds will be applied to the client’s mandate.
- Coalition risk. Industry associations, foundations and research institutes used as advocacy vehicles are frequently within the APCI perimeter. Funding a study through such a body engages the regime even where the investor does not.
- The signal, not the text. The more durable point is directional. A State that has legislated against externally-funded advocacy perceived as adverse to its interests will be less receptive to foreign-funded advocacy generally. Framing matters accordingly: sectoral development and national interest, not the vindication of a private position against the State.
Part Seven — Comparative Analysis: Peru and the United States
7.1 Registration and disclosure
Table 11 — Law No. 28024 against the Lobbying Disclosure Act
| Feature | Peru (Interest Management) | United States (LDA, 2 U.S.C. §1601 et seq.) |
| Is there a lobbyist register? | No. Abolished in 2017 | Yes. Registration with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate |
| Who must file? | Nobody on the private side | The registrant — the lobbying firm or the employing organization — naming each lobbyist |
| Registration trigger | None. Disclosure attaches to each act, and the duty falls on the official | An individual making two or more lobbying contacts who devotes 20% or more of time for that client in any three-month period |
| Monetary thresholds | None. All advocacy is within the regime regardless of value | Below USD 3,500 quarterly income per client (firms) or USD 16,000 quarterly expenses (in-house), no registration is required. Effective Jan 1, 2025; next indexation Jan 1, 2029 |
| Timing | Real time. The official records the act, in-premises entries after the meeting, off-site entries within 24 hours of return | Registration within 45 days of the first contact or retention; LD-2 quarterly, 20 days after quarter end; LD-203 semi-annually |
| Financial disclosure | None | Good-faith estimates of income or expenses; political contributions on the LD-203 |
| Who bears the sanction? | The official — disciplinary under the Civil Service Law, plus civil and criminal liability. None on the advocate | The registrant and the lobbyist — civil penalties up to USD 200,000 and criminal liability for knowing and corrupt failure |
| Exclusions | Public statements, media, solicited information, invited participation, protocol acts, legal defense and advice | De minimis activity below thresholds; certain church, media and government communications |
| Supervising authority | Public Integrity Secretariat of the PCM (guidance and standards; no sanctioning power over advocates) | Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate; referral to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia |
Table 11. Investors should note that Peru is more granular at the level of the individual contact and entirely absent at the level of the actor.
7.2 Foreign representation
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires persons acting in the United States as agents of foreign principals — foreign governments, foreign political parties, and foreign persons and entities — to register with the Department of Justice, label informational materials, and file supplemental statements of activities, receipts and disbursements every six months. Wilful violations, false statements and material omissions carry up to five years’ imprisonment and fines of up to USD 250,000. A rulemaking proposed on December 19, 2024 would, among other things, narrow the commercial exemption; its current status should be verified before relying on that exemption.
Table 12 — Foreign representation: FARA against the Peruvian position
| Feature | United States (FARA) | Peru |
| Dedicated foreign-agent statute | Yes | No. Law 28024 applies identically to nationals and foreigners; Art. 7 expressly covers foreign natural and legal persons |
| Registration by the foreign principal’s agent | Required absent an exemption | Not required. No register exists |
| Identification of the ultimate beneficiary | Required in the registration statement | Captured only through the visitor’s sworn declaration of the person represented, recorded by the official |
| Labelling of materials | Required for informational materials | No equivalent |
| Periodic reporting | Supplemental statements every six months | None |
| Nearest functional analogue | — | Law 32301 (APCI), which targets internationally-funded entities and confers discretionary sanctioning power — a control statute, not a disclosure statute |
| Enforcement | DOJ National Security Division, FARA Unit; criminal and civil enforcement | No equivalent unit. Enforcement is by ordinary criminal process |
Table 12. Law 32301 is often compared to foreign-agent legislation. The comparison is apt as to political effect and misleading as to legal mechanism: FARA compels disclosure and prohibits nothing; the APCI regime conditions activity on prior administrative conformity.
7.3 The asymmetry a US client should expect
Consider the mirror case. A Peruvian mining company retaining a Washington firm to advocate on tariff treatment will trigger LDA registration for the firm, quarterly income disclosure, semi-annual contribution certification, a foreign-entity interest disclosure in the filings and, potentially, a FARA analysis. The compliance burden is heavy — and the permitted conduct is broad: the firm may host events, make political contributions through its PAC, employ former officials after short statutory intervals, and structure fees freely.
Now reverse it. A US company retaining a Lima advisor or firm on a mining concession triggers no registration, no filing, no fee disclosure and no periodic report of any kind. The paperwork is close to nil. But the advisor or firm may not take the official to lunch, may not meet outside the ministry, may not employ the ex-vice-minister of the sector for a year, may not act if a partner is the official’s cousin, and may not contribute a sol (PEN) to any campaign on the client’s behalf. The permitted conduct is quite narrow.
Table 13 — The compliance/permission asymmetry
| Dimension | United States | Peru |
| Administrative burden on the private party | High and continuous | Effectively nil |
| Breadth of permitted conduct | Broad | Narrow |
| Principal legal risk | Failure to register or report | Criminal liability for the manner of the advocacy |
| Where the record is created | By the advocate, in public filings | By the official, in the entity’s register |
| Verification available to the client | Reads its own filings | Must audit a record it does not control |
| Consequence of non-compliance for the client | Civil penalty, reputational | Criminal exposure for the company and its officers, plus corporate liability under Law 30424 |
Table 13. Low paperwork is not low risk. It is the same risk, relocated from the filing cabinet to the Penal Code.
7.4 Shadow lobbying means two different things
In the United States, shadow lobbying is under-registration: advisors who shape strategy and leverage relationships while staying below the twenty-per-cent threshold, so that the profession is materially larger than the register discloses. Legislative proposals to close the gap have been introduced repeatedly without advancing.
In Peru there is no registration to evade. The informality lies elsewhere: in acts of interest management that are never recorded because the official does not record them, or that are recorded as a reunión de trabajo (“working meeting”) rather than gestión de intereses. The 2019 regulation anticipates this by requiring the official to categorize the motive of the visit and to record the substance of the act, and Directive No. 003-2026-PCM/SIP tightens the operative rules further — but the compliance depends on institutional culture and supervision, which academic and civil-society assessments have consistently identified as the weak point of the Peruvian model.
For a foreign multinational the conclusion is the same in both jurisdictions and more urgent in Peru: the client’s protection lies in the record, and where the client does not control the record, it must verify it.
Part Eight — Structuring the Engagement
Because Peruvian law imposes no filing obligation on the advisor, the contract has to do work that in the United States is done by statute. The clauses below are drafted to that purpose. There is no registry in which to register, and a clause promising registration is unperformable.
Table 14 — Clause architecture for a Peru advocacy engagement
| Clause | Content and purpose |
| Characterization of services | Define the services as acts of interest management under Law No. 28024 where they are, and as legal defense and advice under Article 3(6) where they are. Require the advisor to notify the client in writing whenever an interaction changes category. Ambiguity here is the source of most subsequent difficulty |
| Identification of the principal | The advisor shall, in every interaction with an official with decision-making capacity, identify the client as the party on whose behalf he acts, and shall ensure that identification is reflected in the visitor declaration. Recall that the declaration bears sworn-statement character |
| Record verification, not registration | The advisor shall, within a stated period of each interaction, deliver a memorandum recording date, entity, official, subject matter, decision sought and materials submitted; and shall cooperate with the client’s monthly audit of the Visits Register and Official Agendas Register |
| Venue covenant | All interactions to take place at institutional premises during working hours. Any exception to be pre-approved in writing by the client and confirmed as programmed and reasoned in advance in the Official Agendas Register |
| Liberality prohibition | No gift, hospitality, meal, travel, service, employment offer or benefit of any kind to any covered official or to that official’s spouse, partner or relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity, before or after any act — mirroring Art. 17 of the Law and Art. 18(d) of the Regulation |
| Kinship and incompatibility warranty | Representation and continuing warranty against the incompatibilities in Art. 9, including kinship, honorary membership of collegiate bodies of the administration, and media ownership or directorship |
| Revolving-door warranty | Warranty that no individual assigned to the mandate is within a cooling-off period under Law No. 31564 and D.S. 082-2023-PCM, with a duty to notify any change and to withdraw the individual |
| APCI representation | Representation that no international technical cooperation funds are or will be applied to the mandate, and that the advisor is in good standing with APCI where it is a registered entity |
| Anti-corruption representations | Express reference to Arts. 384, 385, 397, 397-A, 398, 399, 400 and 411 of the Penal Code, to Law No. 30424, and to the FCPA and, where relevant, the UK Bribery Act; certification of a prevention model |
| Subcontracting and intermediaries | Prohibition on subcontracting, use of sub-agents, fixers or intermediaries without prior written consent and equivalent due diligence — the route through which most influence-peddling risk enters |
| Audit and books and records | Right to inspect time records, expense records and correspondence relating to the mandate, on notice, for the duration and for a defined period afterwards |
| Termination for cause | Immediate termination, without indemnity, on any breach of the venue, liberality, kinship, revolving-door or intermediary clauses, or on any credible allegation of invoking influence |
| Governing law and language | Peruvian law; Spanish as the governing version where a bilingual instrument is used, with an agreed English translation for the client’s internal record |
Table 14. Clauses three, four and eleven do the work that the LDA does by statute in the United States.
8.1 Success fees, restated
Fee freedom is the civil rule in Peru, and a contingency arrangement agreed in writing before the service begins is not in principle objectionable. Applied to interest management, however, the analysis changes for reasons of evidence rather than of contract law. A substantial payment contingent on a regulatory or legislative outcome creates a documentary record in which the advisor’s remuneration is tied to an official act, and invites both the tax administration and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to ask what the payment purchased. Where any part of the outcome was achieved through an intercession rather than a submission, the fee becomes the quantification of the offense.
The recommended structure is therefore a fixed fee for defined technical deliverables — reports, submissions, hearing preparation — with any variable element modest, capped, tied to verifiable process milestones rather than to the substance of the decision, and fully documented as to the work performed.
Part Nine — Operating Protocol
Table 15 — Ten-step protocol for lawful advocacy in Peru
| # | Step | Action |
| 1 | Map the decision | Identify which of the nine processes in Art. 4 the objective falls within, and which entity owns it. Contract and concession objectives require heightened controls because of collusion exposure |
| 2 | Map the decision-makers | Obtain the entity’s published list of officials with decision-making capacity. Following the July 2026 transition these lists are being reconstituted — do not rely on any list predating it |
| 3 | Screen the advisor | Verify against the monthly list of covered public-sector subjects published by each entity under D.S. 082-2023-PCM; run kinship, media-ownership and similar checks; confirm APCI standing where applicable |
| 4 | Characterise every workstream | Classify each planned interaction in advance as interest management, legal defense, solicited opinion or invited participation, and document the basis. Retain written invitations and information requests |
| 5 | Build the technical file | Prepare written technical, legal or economic reports and file them formally through the entity’s Mesa de Partes. A submission on the record is the strongest evidence that the advocacy was argument, not intercession |
| 6 | Request the meeting formally | Request through institutional channels so that the meeting is programmed and appears in the register. Never accept an off-site meeting without written pre-approval and Agenda annotation |
| 7 | Declare accurately on entry | Ensure the visitor states the motive as interest management and identifies the client. The declaration has sworn-statement character; a false entry engages Art. 411 |
| 8 | Attend in pairs | Never permit a single consultant to meet an official alone. A company representative or second lawyer should attend, and a contemporaneous note should be made |
| 9 | Audit the record monthly | Search the Visits Register and the entity’s Standard Transparency Portal to confirm the interaction was recorded, correctly categorised and attributed to the client. Read the observations field for late entries and rectifications |
| 10 | Escalate discrepancies | Where an interaction is missing or mis-categorised, raise it in writing with the advisor and, if unresolved, with the entity’s Integrity Office. A documented escalation is the client’s best evidence of good faith |
Table 15. Steps 9 and 10 have no United States analogue and are indispensable in Peru, precisely because the advisor has no filing duty.
| Three things to refuse, without exception
First, any meeting proposed outside the institution’s premises that has not been pre-approved and annotated. Second, any advisor who advances a personal relationship — a friend, a former colleague, a relative — as the reason he can deliver the result; under Plenary Agreement 3-2015/CJ-116 the buyer who reinforces that proposition answers as an instigator, and it is immaterial that the influence was fictitious. Third, any payment whose commercial rationale cannot be reconstructed from a deliverable. |
Part Ten — The 2026 Institutional Reset
10.1 A new executive and a new Congress
Peru held general elections on April 12, 2026, with a run-off on June 7, 2026. Keiko Fujimori was proclaimed President-elect by the National Jury of Elections on July 3, 2026 and took office on July 28, 2026 for the 2026–2031 term. Every ministerial and vice-ministerial appointment, and consequently every entry on every entity’s list of officials with decision-making capacity, dates from that transition or later.
More consequentially for advocacy, Peru returned to bicameralism. Under the constitutional reform effected by Law No. 31988, sixty senators and one hundred and thirty deputies were sworn in on July 24, 2026, the chambers elected their presiding officers on July 24, and the first ordinary legislature of the 2026–2027 session was installed on July 27. The presidency of Congress alternates between the presiding officers of the two chambers, beginning with the Senate. No party holds an absolute majority in either chamber.
10.2 What bicameralism changes for advocacy
- Two chambers, two committee systems. Item 1 of Article 4 of Law 28024 captures the study of bills by committees. That now means committees in both chambers, each with its own membership, calendar and technical staff.
- A second review stage. Most bills originate in the Chamber of Deputies and are reviewed by the Senate. A submission made once, to one committee, no longer reaches the whole legislative process.
- Exclusive Senate competences. The Senate elects the Ombudsman, Constitutional Court magistrates and three members of the Central Reserve Bank board, ratifies international treaties and authorizes presidential travel — a distinct set of decisions with a distinct set of decision-makers.
- Implementation risk in the transition. Commentators have flagged normative gaps, duplication and coordination problems in the first months of the new model, with the possibility that the parliamentary rules require adjustment. Advocacy plans should assume procedural instability through at least the first legislature.
10.3 The OECD accession overlay
Peru is engaged in an accession process in which public governance, integrity and anti-bribery are among the evaluated chapters, and it has been publicly identified as the most advanced Latin American candidate. The Ministry of Justice has been engaging with the OECD Working Group on Bribery, and the Public Integrity Secretariat has been developing reforms on whistleblower reporting and protection in response to accession recommendations. The OECD’s Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026 includes a country note for Peru drawing on Public Integrity Indicators covering lobbying and conflict of interest.
The direction of travel is therefore towards tightening, not liberalisation. A foreign investor building a Peru advocacy capability should build it to the standard the accession process is pushing towards, not to the standard current enforcement tolerates.
Conclusion
Lobbying is not prohibited in Peru. Since 2017 the framework statute has described interest management, in terms, as a lawful activity of promoting legitimate interests in the process of public decision-making. The persistent belief to the contrary derives from the frequency with which its criminal counterpart, trading in influence, is prosecuted — and from the fact that the two are separated not by the objective pursued but by the manner in which it is pursued.
What is limited, and in most instances prohibited, is the American way of doing it. Peru has no lobbyist, no register, no accreditation, no filing and no fee disclosure. It has, instead, a prohibition on meeting anywhere but the ministry; a prohibition on any gift, meal or courtesy extending to the official’s family; a disqualification for kinship to the fourth degree; a one-year door closed to former officials and a three-year door closed in the other direction; a bar on media proprietors acting as advocates; and an absolute prohibition on any political contribution by a foreign company. What remains permitted is the argument itself — made on the record, at the institution, in writing, and attributable to a named principal.
For a United States investor this is a demanding but entirely workable environment, and in one respect a favourable one: where the only currency is technical merit, a well-prepared foreign investor competes on equal terms with a well-connected local one. The conditions are that the client accept a narrower toolkit than it is accustomed to, that it treat the absence of filing obligations as an absence of protection rather than an absence of risk, and that it audit a public record it does not control.
The 2026 environment — a new administration, a Congress reconstituted after thirty-three years of unicameralism, a fresh operative directive on the disclosure platforms, a contested foreign-funding statute and an accession process pressing towards higher standards — makes that discipline more necessary, not less. In the Peruvian legal architecture, the record is the defense.
Scope and limitations
This report states the position as at 9 August 2026 and is intended as general legal-informational analysis for foreign investors and their counsel. It is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Peruvian norms in this field have changed materially and repeatedly — including three weeks before the date of this edition — and the constitutional status of Law No. 32301 is unresolved. Any specific engagement should be verified against the consolidated texts in force and against qualified Peruvian counsel at the time of the transaction.
Annex — Normative and Documentary Index
| Reference | Description |
| Law No. 28024 | Law regulating interest management in public administration (2003, as amended) |
| Legislative Decree No. 1353 | Creates the National Transparency Authority; amends Arts. 1, 7, 16 and repeals Arts. 8, 11–15, 19–21 of Law 28024 (7 Jan 2017) |
| Legislative Decree No. 1415 | Amends Law 28024 on preventive registers, official agendas and visits registers (13 Sept 2018) |
| Supreme Decree No. 120-2019-PCM | Regulation of Law 28024 (repealing D.S. 099-2003-PCM) |
| Directive No. 003-2026-PCM/SIP | Directive on use of the Visits Register and Official Agendas Register, approved by Res. Sec. Integridad Pública 008-2026-PCM/SIP (21 July 2026) |
| Law No. 27815 | Code of Ethics of the Public Function |
| Law No. 27806 / D.S. 007-2024-JUS | Transparency and Access to Public Information, and its regulation |
| Law No. 31564 / D.S. 082-2023-PCM | Prevention and mitigation of conflicts of interest on entry to and exit from public service |
| Law No. 30424 / Laws 30835 and 31740 / D.S. 002-2025-JUS | Administrative liability of legal persons in criminal proceedings, and prevention-model regulation |
| Law No. 32254 | Amends the Law of Political Organisations on private financing (31 Jan 2025) |
| Law No. 32301 / D.S. 033-2025-RE | Amends the APCI Law; Regulation of Infringements and Sanctions |
| Law No. 31988 | Constitutional reform restoring bicameralism, effective with the 2026–2031 Congress |
| Penal Code, Arts. 384, 385, 393–399, 400, 411 | Collusion, unlawful patronage, bribery, incompatible negotiation, trading in influence, false statement |
| Plenary Agreement No. 3-2015/CJ-116 | Supreme Court doctrine on trading in influence; liability of the buyer as instigator |
| Casación No. 3208-2022, Amazonas | Simulated-influence modality held not unconstitutional |
| 2 U.S.C. §1601 et seq. | Lobbying Disclosure Act; thresholds of USD 3,500 and USD 16,000 effective 1 Jan 2025 |
| 22 U.S.C. §§611–621 | Foreign Agents Registration Act; NPRM of 19 December 2024 |
| visitas.servicios.gob.pe | State platform consolidating the Registro de Visitas en Línea |
| OECD, Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026 — Peru | Country note covering lobbying, conflict of interest and judicial integrity |