LIMA, Peru – Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo was sentenced on Monday to 20 years and six months in prison in a case involving the Brazilian giant Odebrecht, which is synonymous with corruption across Latin America, in which it paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials. and others.
Authorities accused Toledo of accepting $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht to allow construction of a highway in the South American country. The National Superior Court of Specialized Criminal Justice in the capital, Lima, handed down the sentence after years of legal wrangling, including a dispute over whether Toledo, who ruled Peru from 2001 to 2006, could be extradited to the United States.
Judge Inés Rojas said Toledo’s victims were Peruvians who “trusted” him as their president. Rojas explained that in that role, Toledo was “in charge of public funds” and responsible for “protecting and ensuring the proper use” of resources. Instead, he said, “he defrauded the state.”
He added that Toledo “had the duty of absolute neutrality, to protect and preserve the property of the state, avoiding its abuse or exploitation,” but he did not do so.
Odebrecht, which builds some of the most important infrastructure projects in Latin America, admitted to US authorities in 2016 that it bought government contracts across the region with large bribes. The US Department of Justice’s investigation probed several countries, including Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador.
In Peru, authorities accused Toledo and three other former presidents of receiving payments from the construction giant. They allege that Toledo received $35 million from Odebrecht in exchange for a contract to build 650 kilometers (403 miles) of highway linking Brazil and southern Peru. That portion of the highway was originally estimated at $507 million, but Peru ended up paying $1.25 billion.
Rojas once read portions of testimony from a former Odebrecht executive in Peru, Jorge Barata, who told prosecutors that the former president called him three times after he left office to demand payment. Toledo looked down at his hands as Rojas read Barata’s words to prosecutors.
Toledo denies the allegations against him. His lawyer, Roberto Siu, told the media after the hearing that they will appeal the sentence.
The former president on Monday was always smiling, and sometimes laughing, especially when the judge talked about the multi-million dollar sum at the heart of the case and when he tried to read documents and other evidence in the case. Throughout the trial, he also relied on his right to speak to his lawyer.
On the contrary, last week he asked the court in a broken voice with folded hands, as if praying, to let him go home citing his age, cancer and heart.
Toledo, 78, was arrested for the first time in 2019 at his home in California, where he had lived since 2016, when he returned to Stanford University, his alma mater, as a visiting scholar to study education in Latin America. He was initially held in solitary confinement at a county jail east of San Francisco but was released to prison in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his deteriorating mental health.
He was returned to Peru in 2022 after an appeals court rejected a challenge to his extradition and surrendered to authorities. Since then he has remained in detention.
Rojas said Toledo will receive credit for time served beginning in April 2023. He will serve the remainder of his sentence in a prison on the outskirts of Lima that was built specifically to house former Peruvian presidents.
Prosecutor José Domingo Pérez after the hearing described the sentence as “historic” and said it shows the people of Peru that “crimes and corruption are punished.”
Odebrecht was rebranded as Nononor in 2020.
-Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
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