Ex-President Toledo sentenced to 20 years+
Lima, 21 Oct (EFE) –
Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) was sentenced on Monday to 20 years and six months in prison for conspiracy and money laundering in the corruption scandal involving the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
The Second National Collegiate Criminal Court found that the 78-year-old former president received bribes from the Brazilian construction company between 2004 and 2005 related to the concession of sections 2 and 3 of the Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Peru and Brazil.
The Peruvian judiciary accepted the prosecution’s request, sentencing Toledo to nine years in prison for conspiracy and eleven years and six months for money laundering.
The veredict stated that Toledo “colluded with interested parties, such as Odebrecht, so that the Brazilian company would be awarded the contract for the construction of sections 2 and 3 of the Inter-Oceanic Highway, through a bribe of 35 million dollars, causing damage to the State”.
“All these irregularities constitute and prove a clear agreement between an official, primary authority of the State, and private parties. This behavior defrauds the State”, it adds.
According to the prosecution, the money was channeled through Josef Maiman, a deceased Israeli businessman who was close to the president at the time.
The court announced that the sentence was effective immediately, meaning that Toledo will return to Barbadillo prison in Lima, where he has been since his extradition from the United States in April 2023.
During his closing arguments, Toledo insisted on his innocence and asked the judges to allow him to “cure or die at home” due to the cancer and heart problems he suffers.
“I am innocent, I never made any agreement with Mr (Jorge) Barata, let alone with (alleged frontman Josef) Maiman,” he said.
The court also sentenced two former officials of the Private Investment Promotion Agency (Proinversión), Alberto Pasco-Font and Sergio Bravo, to nine years in prison and businessman José Castillo Dibós to 14 years.
Toledo is the first former Peruvian president convicted in the Odebrecht corruption mega-case, which also includes former presidents Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018), and Alan GarcÃa (2006-2011), who took his own life in April 2019.
Odebrecht, now known as Novonor, was at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal after company officials admitted in 2016 to bribing goverment representatives in a dozen countries to win public works contracts.EFE
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