Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo received a sentence of 20 years and six months in prison for corruption and money laundering tied to the Odebrecht scandal, a bribery scheme the Brazilian construction giant ran across Latin America.
A court in Lima found that Toledo accepted $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for steering it the contract to build a stretch of the Interoceanic Highway. Prosecutors said the deal caused serious harm to the Peruvian state.
Toledo, who led Peru from 2001 to 2006, is one of four former presidents investigated over payments from Odebrecht. He was arrested in California in 2019 and extradited from the United States in April 2023, and had been held in prison since then.
He denied any wrongdoing and told the court he “never made any arrangement with Mr. Barata,” a reference to Jorge Barata, the former head of Odebrecht in Peru whose testimony sparked the case.
Authorities said the case spanned 175 hearings and drew on statements from over 100 witnesses, plus extensive documentary evidence. The U.S. Justice Department has called the Odebrecht affair the “largest foreign bribery case in history.”
In 2016 Odebrecht agreed to penalties of at least $2.6 billion, and admitted paying about $788 million in bribes between 2001 and 2016. The price of the southern highway itself grew from $800 million to close to $2 billion.
Sources
- Peru’s former president sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in corruption case linked to Odebrecht scandal – ICIJ
- Alejandro Toledo: Ex-president of Peru gets 20 years for corruption
Sources
- Alejandro Toledo: Ex-president of Peru gets 20 years for corruption
- Peru ex-president Alejandro Toledo jailed for 20 years over…
