Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Corruption

Photo: Renato Pajuelo Agence France-Presse Alejandro Toledo was found guilty of receiving tens of millions of dollars from the Brazilian construction giant.

Luis Jaime Cisneros – Agence France-Presse in Lima

Published at 7:06

• Americas

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, 78, was sentenced Monday by a Lima court to 20 years and six months in prison for corruption and money laundering in the scandal surrounding construction giant Odebrecht.

“This court approves the prosecution's request for 20 years and 6 months in prison for Mr. Alejandro Toledo Manrique,” he announced during a hearing in the presence of the former head of state.

The former strongman of Peru (2001-2006), who received the judgment with apparent serenity, was found guilty of having received tens of millions of dollars from the Brazilian construction giant.

He had been proclaiming his innocence since the revelations made in 2016 by the Brazilian group to the American justice system about a vast regional corruption system aimed at obtaining public contracts.

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His lawyer, Roberto Su, told the press that he intended to appeal the verdict. judgment.

The former president was arrested in 2019 in the United States in connection with this scandal and placed under house arrest in California, until his extradition in April 2023 and his placement in preventive detention at Barbadillo prison, east of Lima.

Alejandro Toledo is the first to be convicted by the courts of the four former Peruvian presidents under investigation in the scandal.

The other three are Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) and Alan Garcia (2006-2011), who committed suicide in 2019 as he was about to be arrested in connection with the case.

“Dying at home”

During a previous hearing last week, the former centre-right president had again proclaimed his innocence. “I am innocent, I never made an agreement with Mr. (Jorge) Barata,” the former head of Odebrecht in Peru, he had pleaded.

But prosecutor José Domingo Pérez had highlighted the evidence that “supported the claim that Alejandro Toledo asked Odebrecht for 35 million dollars” in exchange for granting sections of the Southern Interoceanic Highway, which connects the Pacific coast of Peru and the Atlantic coast of Brazil.

The former president had then asked the judges for leniency, citing his advanced age and state of health. “I have cancer and heart problems […] I want to go to a private clinic, I ask you to let me get treatment or die at home,” he had asked.

Odebrecht was the company most cited in the vast anti-corruption investigation Lava Jato (Express Wash) that put dozens of political and business leaders in Latin America behind bars.

According to the US Department of Justice, Odebrecht distributed $788 million in a dozen Latin American countries and two in Africa over a decade.

When the first investigations began in 2014, Odebrecht employed 180,000 people worldwide.

After Brazil, Peru is the second country most affected by this affair, which has caused several political crises.

Odebrecht has been ordered to pay reparations in many countries, including $2.6 billion to the governments of Brazil, the United States and Switzerland.