Susana Higuchi

Of Japanese descent, Higuchi was born in Lima, Peru.

As first lady during her husband's presidency, Higuchi was among the early people in Peru to allege criminal misdoings on the part of her husband. As early as 1992, she denounced several of her Fujimori in-laws for corruption in connection with the sale of used clothing donated by Japan. In 1994, she publicly condemned her husband as a tyrant and his government as corrupt. Fujimori reacted by formally stripping her of the title First Lady in August 1994, appointing their elder daughter Keiko First Lady in her place.

Higuchi thereupon established her own political party, the Harmony 21st century, and announced her intention to enter politics as a candidate for mayor of Lima in the 1995 elections. In December 1994 the Harmony party was ruled ineligible because it failed to muster the required number of signatures to qualify as a legitimate political party.

Because of her outspokenness, Higuchi was subjected to repeated efforts to silence her. In 2001, she told investigators probing the corruption of the Fujimori years that she had been tortured "five hundred times" by the intelligence services of the Peruvian Army.[1] Fujimori denied that Higuchi had been tortured. He said the scars on her back and neck were not caused by torture, but were the result of a traditional Chinese and Japanese therapy called moxibustion, which Higuchi underwent to help her stop smoking and to relieve back troubles.

In July 2001, she alleged that in 1990, shortly before coming to power, her ex-husband received a donation of US$12.5 million from Japanese citizens destined for poor children in Peru, but he deposited it in a private bank account in Japan.[2]

Higuchi married Alberto Fujimori in 1974 and formally divorced him in 1996. They have four children: Keiko Sofía, Hiro Alberto, Sachi Marcela, and Kenji Gerardo.