Asked about this intersection, Espinoza maintains: “Years ago, with the purpose of having an activity outside of the public entity, but private, we decided to create this company and dedicate ourselves to what inflatables are (…). We have it until today established because we are civil servants with more than 24 years of experience and along the way you form friendships and try to create societies so that in the future your children or your descendants can live peacefully.”
The truth is that the duo comes from before. Espinoza and Lizárraga had already coincided in the District Municipality of Surquillo, where they held the positions of municipal manager and manager of Administration and Finance, respectively.
Appointment of María Elena Lizárraga, partner of the then municipal manager, Manuel Espinoza and current candidate for PR.
María Lizárraga served as head of the General Administration Office of the District Municipality of Barranco from January 1, 2023 until September 4, when the commune accepted her resignation through Mayor’s Resolution No. 275-2026-RA-MDB. The person who ordered the departure of Espinoza’s partner was the councilor Jaime Chihuán, current mayor in charge of Barranco, at a time when the holder of the position, Jessica Vargas She has been campaigning as a candidate for deputy mayor for Renovación Popular.
Embezzlement case
At the fiscal level, Espinoza appears as accused of the crime of intentional embezzlement. The investigation is led by the Second Corporate Provincial Prosecutor’s Office Specialized in Corruption Crimes of Officials of Lima (Fiscal File No. 145-2025) and was opened on February 27, 2025.
The case was opened for processing travel expenses for a trip abroad for Mayor Jessica Armida Vargas Gómez, allegedly supported by apocryphal documentation. The process is still active: on March 5, 2026, the complainant, Councilor Nicole Muñoz, filed an appeal to raise proceedings to object to a preliminary ruling and request that a higher prosecutor’s office order the proceedings to continue.
Fiorella Muñoz, mayor of the Municipality, denounced Manuel Espinoza for fraudulent embezzlement.
When consulted by this newspaper, the candidate indicates that he has not yet been notified. “We have not yet been notified about it. We know that a preliminary investigation was (opened) and I have asked the lawyers to read (…). But we do not have anything that they have notified me in the investigation, therefore I would not know what it was about, right?”
Four reports, one official
Before arriving in Barranco, Espinoza was municipal manager in Barranco. But his time in public administration in that district left four reports from the Comptroller’s Office in which they found him civil and administrative responsibility.
Together, the four reports add up to economic damages of S/ 832,644.17.
The first, Report No. 002-2017-2-2169, found a loss of S/ 557,769.83 for endorsing and authorizing the monthly payment of bonuses for productivity, schooling and training to trusted personnel through collective agreements that, by law, only corresponded to unionized workers. The Institutional Control Body (OCI) attributed civil and administrative responsibility, also to Lizárraga. In this case, his partner, María Elena Lizárraga Amesquita was also syndicated with civil liability and functional administrative responsibility in his capacity as finance manager.
But it was not the only case. Both also appear included in Report No. 010-2019-2-2169, which evaluated the contracting of the repair service for vehicle units in the commune of Surquillo.
The audit detected irregularities in the disbursement of S/ 17,800.00 for the alleged “corrective maintenance” of an ambulance that was inoperative and without an engine. To support this expense, a notebook was presented with 91 records and signatures that, according to a graphotechnical expertise, turned out to be false. Espinoza and Lizárraga were attributed administrative responsibility.
Manuel Espinoza and María Elena Lizárraga, both included in a Comptroller’s report that detected alleged irregularities in the contracting of a vehicle repair service.
But Espinoza has two more reports in which he is attributed responsibility. Report No. 005-2023-2-2169-SCE attributed civil liability for issuing works regularization licenses without requiring payment of 10% of the value of the building, as required by law, which generated a loss of S/ 216,197.61 to the municipality.
While another report (No. 011-2023-2-2169-SCE) found civil liability for not initiating the pre-coercive and coercive collection of property taxes and excise taxes on time, which allowed those tax debts to expire, with a loss of S/ 40,876.73.
“Part of the exercise of public office we are always subject to these control bodies and subject to this development, which is good because we always have to supervise, prevent and control the actions of officials,” said the candidate.
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