Prosecutor's Office extends its jurisdiction against extortion to all of La Libertad

The Public Ministry expanded the territorial jurisdiction of the Superior Specialized Prosecutor’s Office against Extortion and Related Crimes of La Libertad so that its scope of action encompasses the entire Fiscal District of La Libertad, and not only the province of Trujillo. The decision is contained in the Resolution of the Attorney General’s Office No. 3355-2026-MP-FN, signed by the Attorney General Tomás Aladino Gálvez Villegas on October 23, 2026, and published in the Official Gazette El Peruano on Sunday, October 25, 2026, in the Legal Norms section.

The provision is based on Legislative Decree No. 1735, published on February 12, 2026, which created the Specialized Subsystem against Extortion and its Related Crimes as an inter-institutional model of justice services to strengthen the State’s response to these crimes and protect victims. The Judiciary, the Public Ministry, the National Police of Peru, and the General Directorate of Public Defense and Access to Justice participate in this subsystem through their specialized bodies.

From the province of Trujillo to the entire fiscal district

The regulation modifies the scope established months earlier. Through the Resolution of the Board of Supreme Prosecutors No. 101-2026-MP-FN-JFS, dated August 20, 2026, the subsystem was integrated into the Specialized System against Organized Crime, and the Superior Specialized Prosecutor’s Office and the Provincial Corporate Specialized Prosecutor’s Office of the subsystem against extortion were created on a permanent basis; its fifth article assigned them territorial jurisdiction only in the province of Trujillo.

The First Article of the now-published resolution expands that jurisdiction for the superior prosecutor’s office, while the Second Article charges the National Coordinating Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Specialized Prosecutor’s Offices against Organized Crime with adopting the corresponding actions within the framework of its powers. The resolution specifies that the territorial jurisdiction of the Provincial Corporate Specialized Prosecutor’s Office is not modified.

The gap with the Criminal Appeals Court

The central basis is the need to harmonize the organization of the Public Ministry with that of the Judiciary in the region. Through Administrative Resolution No. 000084-2026-P-CE-PJ, dated August 14, 2026, the Presidency of the Executive Council of the Judiciary created jurisdictional bodies in the Judicial District of La Libertad with supra-provincial territorial jurisdiction and exclusive functional jurisdiction for the crimes defined in Article 200 of the Penal Code and related crimes, including the 1st Permanent Specialized Criminal Court of Appeals against Extortion and Related Crimes of the Superior Court of Justice of La Libertad, with jurisdiction throughout the judicial district.

This discrepancy—a court with regional scope versus a superior prosecutor’s office limited to Trujillo—was noted by the specialized prosecutor’s office itself, which requested the expansion to guarantee the unity of criteria before the superior collegiate body and the timely management of investigations.

Reports that supported the decision

The resolution was issued based on two favorable technical opinions:

• Report No. 000347-2026-MP-FN-FSCN-FECCO, dated October 16, 2026, from the National Coordinating Superior Prosecutor’s Office of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Offices against Organized Crime.
• Report No. 000207-2026-MP-FN-STI-NCPP, dated October 20, 2026, from the Technical Office for the Implementation of the New Criminal Procedure Code, which considered the expansion viable to ensure a specialized, uniform, and articulated prosecutorial intervention and adequate hierarchical control in the second instance.

The text also invokes Article 64 of the Organic Law of the Public Ministry, approved by Legislative Decree No. 052 and modified by Law No. 31718, and paragraph 2 of Article 63 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Among the grounds, the purpose of providing a timely response to the increase in the criminal phenomenon of extortion and its related crimes is expressly mentioned.

Notifications and scope

Article Three provides for the notification of the resolution to:

• The Presidency of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Republic and of the Judiciary.
• The Presidency of the Superior Court of Justice of La Libertad.
• The National Coordinating Superior Prosecutor’s Office of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Offices against Organized Crime and the Superior Specialized Prosecutor’s Office against Extortion and Related Crimes of La Libertad.
• The Presidency of the Board of Superior Prosecutors of La Libertad, the General Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office and the General Management.
• The Technical Office for the Implementation of the New Criminal Procedure Code, the Office of Fiscal Productivity Control, the General Office of Planning, Budget and Modernization, the Office of Modernization, Information Management and Statistics and the Office of Prosecutor Registration and Evaluation.

The measure fully affects those under investigation and the victims in the region: investigations into extortion and related crimes conducted outside the province of Trujillo will remain under the supervision of a single specialized superior office, with uniform criteria for the formulation of requests and fiscal intervention before the jurisdictional bodies. The provision itself emphasizes that this will favor the predictability of decisions, the coherence of the charges, and the equal treatment of litigants in similar situations, within a context of increasing reports of extortion in the north of the country.

Source: Official Gazette El Peruano, Sunday, October 25, 2026 edition, Legal Norms section, pp. 51-52 (official reference: 2568106-1).