Lima, Apr 23 (EFE).- Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo landed in Peru on Sunday after he was extradited from the US to face corruption prices.
Toledo is accused of taking a $20 million bribe from Brazilian building large Odebrecht in trade for awarding the corporate a profitable freeway contract throughout his 2001-2006 presidency.
Toledo arrived at Jorge Chávez Airport on a business flight from Los Angeles, the place he will probably be transferred for an id recognition listening to.
He’s then anticipated to be taken to Barbadillo jail, the place former presidents Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) are being held.
Toledo was arrested in July 2019 at his house in Menlo Park, California, pursuant to an extradition request submitted by Peru in Could 2018. The ex-president had settled in northern California after receiving an appointment as a visiting scholar at Stanford College, his alma mater.
Deemed a flight danger, Toledo spent eight months behind bars earlier than he was granted house confinement in March 2020 as a consequence of Covid-19.
US Justice of the Peace Decide Thomas Hixson dominated in September 2021 that Toledo could possibly be extradited and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken subsequently accepted sending the ex-president house to face justice.
He was initially supposed to show himself in on April 7, however a federal appellate courtroom suspended the order for 14 days to permit his legal professionals time to pursue one final enchantment, which was rejected final week.
“I’m profoundly disenchanted with what has occurred within the (US) Division of Justice and Division of State, however that doesn’t take away my gratitude to this nation that has given me every thing,” Toledo informed EFE.
The fees in opposition to Toledo arose from an investigation spurred by a large settlement that Odebrecht and its petrochemical unit, Braskem, reached in December 2016 with authorities within the US, Brazil and Switzerland.
The Brazilian firms pleaded responsible and agreed to pay at the very least $3.5 billion to resolve prices arising out of bid-rigging schemes that started as early as 2001 and concerned lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in bribes being paid to officers in additional than a dozen international locations.
Toledo is simply one of many Peruvian political heavyweights to have been caught up within the Odebrecht scandal, together with his successors as president Alan Garcia, Ollanta Humala and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
Garcia took his personal life in April 2019 when police got here to his house in Lima to arrest him. Kuczynski, 84, has been awaiting trial below home arrest since 2019, whereas the 60-year-old Humala stays below investigation.
One other determine implicated within the Odebrecht scandal is three-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori, who’s serving life in jail for massacres dedicated throughout his 1990-2000 rule. EFE
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