LIMA, Peru — Former President Alejandro Toledo arrived in Lima Sunday after being extradited from the USA to face costs he allegedly acquired hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes in an enormous corruption scandal that has ensnared 4 of Peru’s ex-presidents.
Toledo, who was Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006, had surrendered to U.S. authorities on Friday, ending a yearslong authorized battle in opposition to his extradition,which began in 2019 when he was arrested at his residence in Menlo Park, California.
Police and officers from Peru’s prosecutor’s workplace acquired Toledo, 77, at Lima’s airport early Sunday. Police launched a photograph of Toledo, trying raveled, accompanied by brokers. He was transferred to a court docket in Lima’s historic middle.
Peru’s former president will serve 18 months of preventative detention whereas he’s investigated for allegedly taking at the very least $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht, an enormous Brazilian building firm that has admitted to U.S. authorities that it bribed officers to win contracts all through Latin America for many years.
Toledo has denied the fees.
After his arrest in California, he was initially held in solitary confinement on the Santa Rita Jail about 40 miles (60 kilometers) east of San Francisco however was launched in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his deteriorating psychological well being. He was held underneath home arrest after that.
He had sought a keep on his extradition, pending a authorized problem to the U.S. State Division’s choice to ship him again to Peru, however a court docket of appeals denied his newest movement and a federal choose ordered him to give up.
Toledo had been residing in California since 2016 when he returned to Stanford College, his alma mater, as a visiting scholar to review training in Latin America.
Jail officers in Peru haven’t determined the place Toledo will probably be held however have mentioned it could possibly be the jail that already holds ex-president Alberto Fujimori (1990 -2000) and ex-president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022). Fujimori is serving a 25-year jail sentence for his position within the murders of 25 Peruvians throughout his administration. Castillo is being held in pretrial detention whereas being investigated for rise up in trying to dissolve Parliament in 2022.
He’s certainly one of 4 ex-presidents linked to the Odebrecht corruption scandal that has shaken Peru’s politics, with almost each residing former president now on trial or underneath investigation.
Former President Ollanta Humala is standing trial on costs that he and his spouse acquired over $3 million from Odebrecht for his presidential campaigns in 2006 and 2011. Each have denied any wrongdoing.
Ex-leader Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who left workplace in 2018, is underneath home arrest for related costs.
Former chief Alan García, in workplace from 2006-2011, fatally shot himself within the head in 2019 as police arrived at his residence to arrest him.
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