Pedro Pablo Kuczynski

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
Prime Minister of Peru
In office 16 August 2005 – 27 July 2006
President	Alejandro Toledo Manrique
Preceded by	Carlos Ferrero Costa
Succeeded by	Jorge del Castillo
Minister of Economy and Finance of Peru
In office 28 July 2001 – 11 July 2002
President	Alejandro Toledo Manrique
Preceded by	Javier Silva Ruete
Succeeded by	Javier Silva Ruete
In office 16 February 2004 – 16 August 2005
President	Alejandro Toledo Manrique
Preceded by	Jaime Quijandría
Succeeded by	Fernando Zavala Lombardi
Minister of Energy and Mines of Peru
In office 28 July 1980 – 3 August 1982
President	Fernando Belaúnde Terry
Preceded by	René Balarezo Vallebuona
Succeeded by	Fernando Montero Aramburú
Personal details
Born	(1938-10-03) October 3, 1938 Lima, Peru
Nationality	United States  Peru
Spouse(s)	Nancy Lange
Children	Carolina Madeleine Kuczynski, Alexandra Louise Kuczynski, John Michael Kuczynski, Suzanne Lange Kuczynski
Residence	San Isidro, Lima, Peru[1]
Alma mater	University of Oxford Princeton University
Occupation	Economist
Religion	Roman Catholic
Website	Official Website

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Godard (born October 3, 1938), better known simply as PPK, is a Peruvian public administrator, economist, and politician that participate in the policy of his country.

Kuczynski worked in the United States before entering Peruvian politics.^[2] he served as Minister of Energy and Mines under President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, and as Minister of Economy and Finance and Prime Minister under President Alejandro Toledo Manrique.^[3]

Kuczynski was a presidential candidate in the 2011 Peruvian presidential election, coming in third place. His opponents Ollanta Humala Tasso and Keiko Fujimori went on to the June 5, 2011 runoff election, in which Humala was elected.^[4]

Early life and career before politics

Kuczynski is of Polish descent. He is the son of Maxime Hans Kuczynski born near Poznań, who was one of the earliest public health leaders in Peru.^[5] He received his early education at Markham College in Lima, Peru, and Rossall School in Lancashire, England. 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 become the Deputy General Manager of the Peruvian Central bank, but left the country in 1969 due to threats from General Juan Velasco Alvarado's administration. He then joined the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. as an economist and, in 1971, became Chief Economist for the northern countries of Latin America at the World Bank, moving on to become Chief of Policy Planning at the Bank. From 1973 to 1975, he was a partner of Kuhn Loeb and 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 1983-1992, 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 a personal savings vehicle Westfield Capital, and in connection with his past activity in LAEF he is an officer of an office-rental partnership South Bayshore Properties.

Political career

In 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. This controversial measure has been subject to repeated change and reinstatement.^[6] Kuczynski also decentralized new investment in electricity generation.

During the 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-senatorship campaign of his wife's cousins in Wisconsin.^[7]

In 2000, Alejandro Toledo Manrique, then professor at the ESAN university in Lima, asked Kuczynski to advise him on his campaign for president. Kuczynski returned to work in Peru, and after Toledo's successful campaign, Kuczynski was appointed as his Minister of Economy and Finance from July 2001 to July 2002,^[8] and again from February 2004 to August 2005. In August 2005 he was appointed Prime Minister, a position he held until Toledo's presidential term expired in 2006.

It has been alleged, notably in 2007 by the commentator Manuel Dammert Ego Aguirre, 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 in due course Kuczynski sued Dammert for defamation and falsification of documents. Kuczynski's suit was upheld at first and second instance, but on appeal to Peru's Supreme Court Dammert's right to opine on matters of public interest was upheld, without ruling on the merits of Dammert's claims, which have been discussed extensively by Kuczynski.^[9][10]

After 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.^[11]

On December 1, 2010, Kuczynski announced that he was a candidate for president of Peru in the upcoming elections.^[12] 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.

Family and personal life

His father, Dr. Maxime Hans Kuczynski, born in Berlin, Germany 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. Leaving Germany in 1933, 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. Dr. 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 San Marcos University in Lima.^[13]

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Godard has been married twice: first with Jane Dudley Casey (daughter of Joseph E. Casey, member of congress for the 3rd district of Massachusetts), their offspring being Carolina Madeleine Kuczynski, the journalist Alex Kuczynski,^[8] 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.

References

External links

• (Spanish) Official Website
• (Spanish) Pedro Pablo Kuczynski profile - El Mundo newspaper
• PPK on Twitter
• Newsweek interview with Kuczynski

Prime Ministers of Peru Óscar Vargas Prieto Jorge Fernández Maldonado Solari Guillermo Arbulú Galliani Óscar Molina Pallochia Pedro Richter Prada Manuel Ulloa Elías Fernando Schwalb López Aldana Sandro Mariátegui Chiappe Luis Pércovich Luis Alva Castro Guillermo Larco Cox Armando Villanueva del Campo Luis Alberto Sánchez Guillermo Larco Cox Juan Carlos Hurtado Miller Carlos Torres y Torres Lara Alfonso de Los Heros Oscar De La Puente Alfonso Bustamante Efrain Goldenberg Dante Cordova Alberto Pandolfi Javier Valle Riestra Alberto Pandolfi Víctor Joy Way Alberto Bustamante Belaunde Federico Salas Javier Pérez de Cuéllar Roberto Dañino Zapata Luis Solari De La Fuente Beatriz Merino Carlos Ferrero Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Jorge Del Castillo Yehude Simon Javier Velásquez José Antonio Chang Rosario Fernández Salomón Lerner Ghitis Oscar Valdés Juan Jiménez Mayor César Villanueva René Cornejo Ana Jara Pedro Cateriano