Lima. Peru’s justice system on Thursday ordered former President Alejandro Toledo to serve 30 months of preventive detention while he is investigated for accusations of collusion and money laundering, the judiciary reported on social media X.
Toledo, who governed the country between 2001 and 2006, had been in preventive detention in a Lima prison since April last year, when he was extradited from the United States to face corruption charges.
Toledo’s investigations are related to the construction of the interoceanic highway that links the southern coast of Peru with Brazil, the judiciary said.
Prosecutors have asked for a 20-year prison sentence for the 78-year-old former president, accusing him of having received some $35 million in bribes from the Brazilian company Odebrecht in exchange for the contract to build the highway.
The former president, of Andean origin and a shoeshiner as a child, was arrested in the United States in 2019 following a formal request from Peru for his extradition. He had left the country a year earlier and was declared a fugitive by the courts.
The Odebrecht corruption scandals have affected several Latin American governments and involved almost all of the former Peruvian presidents of the last two decades.
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– 2024-08-11 12:48:49
