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The justice system and the academic sphere are currently facing a silent but devastating threat: the alarming emergence of individuals who, under the guise of private associations of forensic anthropologists or in a personal capacity, act as syndicates with ideological and criminal purposes against the Peruvian State. They offer specialized, high-level expert witness services and training without possessing the scientific, ethical, or legal backing required by the Peruvian legal system.
The Proliferation of "Super-Experts" and Academic Fraud in Anonymity
The informal and illegal market of forensic science has shaped two recurring criminal modalities.
On one hand, there is the appearance of individuals who lack a professional degree in anthropology or the mandatory professional registration and active status, yet style themselves as "super-experts". They claim to be capable of issuing expert reports in any specialty—ranging from ballistics and crime scenes to physical anthropology—flagrantly violating the exclusive scientific competencies of each discipline.
On the other hand, private institutions and associations are proliferating, offering diploma courses and specialization training in forensic anthropology while keeping the names of their instructors strictly anonymous until enrollment. The reason for this concealment is evident: those teaching the classes are not professional anthropologists, lack scientific production and forensic experience, or are absolute unknowns in the academic community. This type of pseudo-training not only defrauds students but also introduces erroneous concepts and bad practices that irreversibly damage forensic education in the country.
Criminal Anthropologist Experts and Ties to Terrorism
The problem worsens exponentially with allegations that some of these groups and networks are composed of specialists with police records. Some even possess a history of arrest warrants arising from their involvement in illicit activities during the period of the fight against terrorism. These individuals have allegedly played a crucial role in accusations against members of the armed forces for extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances.
In effect, the participation of these specialists faces severe questioning due to an alarming and suspicious scientific and technical deficiency, as well as elementary methodological errors in the identification, recovery, and analysis of human remains. The lack of an ethical filter and rigorous oversight allows these elements to infiltrate not only official expert practice but also private or defense counsel work. Operating collectively as syndicates, they present themselves as qualified interlocutors before the authorities, when in reality they only seek to continue their ideological project against the Peruvian State and their highly lucrative activities in human rights issues.
Currently, the situation reaches scandalous proportions when analyzing the performance of certain official experts. In their capacity as public servants in high-profile court cases, they face serious public allegations of generic fraud, abuse of authority, usurpation of functions, and even the presentation of forged training certificates.
Likewise, there is open functional misconduct and a lack of ethics: State servants acting as defense experts or sponsoring associations against the very public institutions for which they provide services, or exploiting their access to official information to favor private interests. This conduct not only violates elementary ethical principles but directly breaches explicit legal prohibitions regarding dual salary perception, conflicts of interest, and post-employment restrictions within the Peruvian public administration.
The Peruvian Legal Framework: Explicit Violations of Current Regulations
The actions of these fake associations and infringing experts directly clash with constitutional norms, special laws, and institutional codes that regulate professional practice in Peru:
1. The Illegal Exercise of a Profession and the Mandatory Professional Registration
In Peru, a forensic anthropologist expert is strictly required to hold a professional degree as an anthropologist, and to be registered and active within the Professional College of Anthropologists of Peru. Those who perform expert functions or teach forensic coursework without meeting these requirements commit offenses criminalized under the Penal Code.
Article 363 of the Peruvian Penal Code textually establishes:
"He who practices a profession without meeting the required legal conditions shall be punished with a restriction of liberty of no less than two and no more than four years".
Furthermore, Article 273 of the 2004 Criminal Procedure Code (CPP) is conclusive regarding the conditions an expert must meet:
"The expert must possess a professional degree in the matter and be duly registered in their professional college, unless the science, technique, or art is not regulated or there are no professionals available in the locality".
In the case of graduates in social anthropology, they should only be authorized to conduct socio-cultural expert assessments. Given that anthropology is a fully regulated profession in the country, the use of fake degrees or the simulation of competencies constitutes a clear criminal violation.
2. Direct Violation of Law N° 31564 (Law for the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest)
The actions of public servants who participate as defense experts against the State itself or who incur conflicts of interest are severely sanctioned.
Law N° 31564—*the Law regulating obligations and restrictions applicable to public servants in order to prevent conflicts of interest*—and its respective regulations explicitly prohibit personnel serving the state apparatus from intervening in matters where the institution they belong to is a procedural party or holds opposing interests. Acting as a defense expert against one's own institution violates the principle of probity outlined in Article 7 of Law N° 27815 (Law of the Code of Ethics of the Public Function), which mandates that public servants must act with rectitude and honesty, striving to satisfy the general interest and rejecting any personal profit or advantage.
3. Technical Deficiency vs. Rules of Scientific Admissibility
The expert reports issued by these "super-experts" or false specialists lack valid probative value and are routinely dismissed during the intermediate control stages of criminal proceedings due to their evident lack of reliability.
Article 178 of the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that an expert report must mandatorily contain:
"The description of the situation or state of facts, whether person or thing, upon which the expert assessment was made; the detailed exposition of what was practiced and its result; and the conclusions reached in accordance with the principles of their science, technique, or art".
When an expert acts with "high scientific deficiency," fakes certifications, or lacks the appropriate training to validate the international methods and techniques they use within the Peruvian population, they violate the guarantees of due process. This exposes judicial operators to grave judicial errors and revictimizes those affected.
Conclusion
Forensic anthropology in Peru cannot become a playing field for front associations with ideological and criminal aims against the Peruvian State, academic frauds, or sanctioned professionals with conflicts of interest who commercialize justice.
The oversight institutions of the justice system have an imperative obligation to supervise and rigorously apply the criminal and administrative sanctions demanded by Peruvian laws. Defending the rigor of forensic science is, ultimately, defending truth, the rights of the population, and the memory of the victims.
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