The former president of Peru Toledo, sentenced to two decades in prison for accepting bribes

LIMA – Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo was sentenced this Monday to 20 years and six months in prison for accepting bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

The guilty verdict marks Peru’s first high-profile conviction related to the Lava Jato corruption scandal that has engulfed the Brazilian continent.

Toledo, a 78-year-old economist with a PhD from Stanford University, ruled the Andean nation from 2001 to 2006.

He was convicted of taking $35 million in bribes from the company formerly known as Odebrecht, according to prosecutors, in exchange for letting it win a contract to build the road that now connects Peru’s southern coast to an Amazon region in the west of Brazil.

During the year-long trial, Toledo denied charges of money laundering and collusion.

Odebrecht, now known as Novonor, was at the center of Latin America’s biggest graft scandal, after admitting in 2016 that it bribed officials in a dozen countries to win public works contracts.

Last week, Toledo asked the court to let him serve his sentence at home while he battles cancer.

“Please let me heal or die at home,” he said. Reuters