Peru’s former president Alejandro Toledo sentenced to 20.5 years in prison

LIMA, Peru – Peru’s former President Alejandro Toledo was sentenced Monday to 20 years and six months in prison in a case involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht that became synonymous with corruption across Latin America, where he raised millions of dollars paid bribes to government officials and others.

Authorities accused Toledo of accepting $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for approval to build a highway in the South American country. The National Special Criminal Court in the capital Lima handed down the sentence after years of legal wrangling, including a dispute over whether Toledo, which ruled Peru from 2001 to 2006, could be extradited from the United States.

Judge Inés Rojas said Toledo’s victims were Peruvians who “trusted” him as their president. Rojas explained that in this role, Toledo would be “responsible for managing public finances” and responsible for “protecting and ensuring the correct” use of resources. Instead, he “deceived the state,” she said.

She added that Toledo had “a duty to act with absolute neutrality, to protect and preserve the state’s assets and to avoid their misuse or exploitation,” but he had failed to do so.

Odebrecht, which built some of Latin America’s most important infrastructure projects, admitted to U.S. authorities in 2016 that it had used generous bribes to buy government contracts across the region. The U.S. Department of Justice investigation led to investigations in 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 claimed that Toledo received $35 million from Odebrecht in exchange for a contract to build a 650-kilometer highway connecting Brazil to southern Peru. The cost of this portion of the highway was originally estimated at $507 million, but Peru ultimately paid $1.25 billion.

Rojas at one point read portions of the testimony of former Odebrecht manager in Peru, Jorge Barata, who told prosecutors that the former president called him up to three times after he left office to demand his pay. Toledo lowered his eyes and looked at his hands as Rojas read the profanity-laden remarks Barata told prosecutors.

Toledo has denied the allegations against him. His lawyer Roberto Siu told reporters after the hearing that they would appeal the verdict.

The former president grinned frequently and sometimes laughed Monday, particularly as the judge mentioned millions of dollars central to the case and as she struggled to read transcripts and other evidence in the case. He also exercised his right to speak to his lawyer throughout the hearing.

In contrast, last week, with a broken voice and folded hands as if praying, he asked the court for permission to return home, citing his age, cancer and heart problems.

Toledo, 78, was first arrested 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 house arrest in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his deteriorating mental health.

He was extradited to Peru in 2022 after an appeals court rejected a challenge to his extradition and he surrendered to authorities. Since then he has remained in preventive detention.

Rojas said Toledo will receive credit for time served beginning in April 2023. He will serve the rest of his sentence in a prison on the outskirts of Lima that was specifically built to house former Peruvian presidents.

Prosecutor José Domingo Pérez called the verdict “historic” after the hearing and said it showed Peruvians that “crimes and corruption will be punished.”

Odebrecht was renamed Novonor in 2020.

– Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.