Peruvian judge Juan Gustavo Varillas Solano has faced a request for his dismissal from the judiciary since October 2024, yet he still heads the Seventh Civil Commercial Court in Lima, ruling on business disputes worth millions of dollars.
The destitution request was filed on October 17, 2024, by the Sanction and Appeal Unit with Roberto Palacios Bran, head of Peru's National Judicial Control Authority, known as the ANC-PJ, asking him to forward the proposal to the National Justice Board, the body that appoints and removes magistrates. Nearly two years later, the request remains stuck moving between the two agencies. The ANC-PJ was created to speed up disciplinary work once handled by the now-defunct Office of Magistracy Control, known as OCMA.
Two prior suspensions
Varillas Solano has already served two suspensions tied to his handling of precautionary court orders. In the current case, Judge David Fernando Correa Castro, head of the ANC-PJ's Administrative Disciplinary Procedures Unit, suspended him for six months starting March 10, 2024, under Resolution No. 001 dated March 7, 2024. The suspension was extended another six months, running through March 2025, before he returned to the Seventh Civil Commercial Court despite the pending destitution request.
Judicial records also show Varillas Solano was suspended by OCMA from March 2016 to May 2017. Official sources said the disciplinary file from that period, which should have led to a destitution request before the then-National Council of the Magistracy, was never resolved and remains misplaced somewhere in the bureaucracy rather than lost.
That 2016-2017 suspension followed a complaint from the attorney's office of the Tacna regional government after Varillas Solano granted a precautionary measure to Consorcio Salud Tacna that blocked the state from collecting bond payments over delays in building a hospital. The suspension order found that his ruling showed only apparent reasoning, without sufficient analysis of the required legal elements, and said it was unreasonable that he accepted an insultingly small sworn bond that could not cover the damages his order caused the state.
Investigation and pending criminal cases
In June 2023, María Zavala Valladares, then an instructor at the National Justice Board, opened a disciplinary investigation into Varillas Solano's conduct at the Seventh Civil Commercial Court after public complaints. With the board's membership since changed, that investigation remains shelved. Judicial sources said the current board has prioritized political cases against judges and prosecutors over judicial corruption cases like this one.
According to judicial sources, the Sanctions Unit is seeking Varillas Solano's dismissal over precautionary measures he issued quickly in the Gol Perú case, the dispute over the Meliá hotel, and the Chillón bridge toll, as well as his ties to fugitive judge César Hinostroza, which the sources said pointed to possible trafficking of influence.
Varillas Solano also faces criminal proceedings separate from the disciplinary case. He is a defendant in a corruption case in which his assets have been placed under a precautionary embargo to guarantee civil reparations to the state. He also faces a bribery case over alleged complicity with Juan Ulises Salazar Laynes, the dismissed judge of Lima's Tenth Commercial Court, in the Oncoserv case; Salazar Laynes allegedly sought up to $30,000 for a precautionary ruling.
