Peru’s former president Toledo receives more than 20 years in prison for a case related to the corruption scandal

The former president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, was sentenced this Monday to 20 years and six months in prison in a case related to the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which became synonymous with corruption in Latin America, where he paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and others.

Authorities accused Toledo of accepting $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for allowing the construction of a road in the South American country.

The National Superior Court of Specialized Criminal Justice in the capital, Lima, imposed the sentence after years of court wrangling, including a dispute over whether Toledo, who 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 president. Rojas explained that, in this role, Toledo was responsible for “managing public finances” and “protecting and ensuring the correct use” of resources. Instead, he said, he “let the state down.”

He added that Toledo “had the duty to act with absolute neutrality, to protect and preserve the assets of the State, avoiding their abuse or exploitation”, but it did not do so.

Odebrecht, which built some of Latin America’s most crucial infrastructure projects, admitted to US authorities in 2016 that it had bought government contracts across the region with lavish bribes.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigation sparked probes 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 alleged that Toledo received $35 million from Odebrecht in exchange for the contract to build 403 miles of a highway linking Brazil with southern Peru.

This part of the highway was initially estimated to cost $507 million, but Peru ended up paying $1.25 billion.

Rojas at one point read parts of the testimony of Jorge Barata, a former Odebrecht executive in Peru, who told prosecutors that the former president called him up to three times after he left office to demand payment.

Toledo looked down and looked at his hands as Rojas read the profanity-laced statements Barata recounted to prosecutors.

Toledo has denied the allegations against him. His lawyer, Roberto Siu, told reporters after the hearing that they will appeal the sentence.

On Monday, the former president smiled frequently and sometimes laughed, especially when the judge mentioned multimillion-dollar sums central to the case, as well as when she struggled to read transcripts and other evidence in the case.

Throughout the hearing, he also leaned on his right to speak to his lawyer.

Instead, last week he begged the court in a broken voice and clasped his hands, as if he were praying, to let him go 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 placed on home release in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his deteriorating mental health.

He was extradited to Peru in 2022 after an appeals court denied a challenge to his extradition and handed himself over to authorities. Since then, he has remained in pre-trial 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 outside Lima that was built specifically to house former Peruvian presidents.

Prosecutor José Domingo Pérez after the hearing called the sentence “historic” and said it shows Peruvians that “crimes and corruption are punished.”

Odebrecht changed its name to Novonor in 2020.