LIMA – A Peruvian court on Monday sentenced former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo to 20 years and six months in prison for collusion, a type of corruption, and money laundering for receiving money from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for awarding the construction of a stretch of the highway that connected Brazil with Peru.
Judge Inés Rojas, who read the sentence for more than four hours, considered Toledo as the highest charge involved and indicated that the assumptions of guilt for both crimes were met. He also imposed a three-year disqualification from holding public office, as requested by the prosecution.
Toledo is the second former Peruvian president convicted of corruption, after the recently deceased Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) received three sentences for that crime in 2009, apart from another as the direct perpetrator of 25 murders.
The prosecutor’s office accused the former president of receiving 35 million dollars from Odebrecht in exchange for awarding the Brazilian construction company – noted for similar cases in several Latin American countries – a public tender to build 650 kilometers of the so-called Interoceanic highway that connects Brazil with the southern Peru. That part of the highway initially cost 507 million dollars, but Peru ended up paying 1,255 million dollars.
Judge Rojas said that Toledo as president “had the duty to act with absolute neutrality, protect and preserve state assets, preventing their abuse or use,” but he did not do so.
At one point the magistrate read the statements of the former Odebrecht executive in Peru, Jorge Barata, who told the prosecutors that, after ending his government (2001-2006), Toledo called him up to three times demanding that he be paid with harsh words. While the judge read, Alejandro Toledo looked down and looked at his hands.
The judge said that the trial had been held in 175 hearings, with more than 100 witnesses, more than 1,000 documentary evidence attached in 348 volumes, which in total amounted to more than 173,676 pages, on which the court relied to declare the former president guilty. .
Toledo, who has denied the accusations, has been in preventive prison since April 2023. Three other former leaders of Peru were implicated in other cases for irregularities with Odebrecht, which in 2020 changed its name to Novonor.
The former president asked the judges in a hearing on Wednesday of last week, in a time they granted him to defend himself, to let him return home because he was sick. With a broken voice and folded hands, as if he were praying, he said he had cancer, heart problems and was close to turning 80. “I ask you please, let me heal or die in my house,” he said.
But the magistrates indicated that at the end of the reading of the sentence he had to go directly to his cell. The judge said that Toledo, 78, will be imprisoned until October 22, 2043, when he will be 97 years old. The former president, dressed in a black jacket, white shirt and jeans, listened to the sentence scratching his head, writing on a piece of paper or lowering his head, looking at his crossed hands.
Almost at the end of the hearing, prosecutor José Domingo Pérez complained to the magistrates that the former president insulted him at the time of hearing his sentence and asked to verify it with the courtroom cameras.
Outside the courtroom, prosecutor Pérez said in a hoarse voice that the sentence was “historic” and that the message that was given to the population was that “crimes and corruption are punished.” But Toledo’s lawyer, Roberto Siu, later commented that they will appeal the conviction.
Three other former leaders of Peru were implicated in other cases for irregularities with Odebrecht, which in 2020 changed its name to Novonor.
Toledo has been in preventive detention since he was extradited from the United States to a capital prison for former presidents. He was arrested in 2019 at the request of the Peruvian justice system. Former President Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) is imprisoned in that same prison, while he is being investigated for the alleged crime of corruption and rebellion.
The former president had lived in the United States since 2016 when he returned to Stanford University, his alma mater, as a visiting professor to train in education issues in Latin America.
Along with Toledo, two other former presidents are being investigated or prosecuted for their alleged links with Odebrecht. Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) faces a trial in which the prosecution has requested 20 years in prison for money laundering and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) is investigated for collusion, with a ban on leaving the country, in addition to having part of his pension as former president seized.
The most tragic case was that of former president Alan García (2006-2011), who committed suicide in 2019 in his bedroom minutes before the police went in to preliminarily detain him for 10 days to be investigated for allegedly having received a bribe from the Brazilian company.
Investigations against the Peruvian political class began after Odebrecht admitted to United States authorities in 2016 that it had bribed important officials in several Latin American countries, including Peru, to obtain advantageous infrastructure contracts.
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