LIMA (AP) — Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo arrived in Lima on Sunday after being extradited from the United States to serve 18 months in preventive detention while he is investigated for receiving millions of dollars in bribes for the award of the construction of a highway to the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
Toledo arrived on Peruvian lands on a commercial flight at 7:02 local time (1202GMT), at the Jorge Chávez airport in the capital. Thus culminated the request to bring him from the United States to the South American country to be submitted to the Peruvian justice, a process that began in 2018 when the prosecution requested his extradition.
The judicial authorities indicated that the police and the prosecutor’s office would receive Toledo at the airport and then transfer him to a court in the historic center of Lima for an identity check and a medical examination.
The Peruvian penitentiary agency will evaluate the prison where Toledo, 77, will be interned, but the government announced that it is possible that the former president will be held in the prison for presidents in the eastern part of Lima where two other ex-presidents are imprisoned: Alberto Fujimori (1990 -2000) and Pedro Castillo (2021-2022). Fujimori is serving a 25-year prison sentence for his responsibility in the murder of 25 Peruvians during his administration. Castillo is being held for 18 months in pretrial detention while being investigated for rebellion in attempting to dissolve Parliament in 2022.
Toledo, who was Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006, is accused of taking at least $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that has admitted to US authorities that it bribed officials to win contracts across Latin America for decades. Toledo has refuted the charges.
The ex-president had requested that his extradition be suspended, pending the resolution of a challenge against the decision of the United States Department of State to send him to Peru, but an appeals court this week denied his last request and a federal judge ordered it delivered.
Following his arrest in 2019, Toledo was initially held in solitary confinement at the Santa Rita jail, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) east of San Francisco, but was released in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. and deteriorating mental health. He was on house arrest after that.
Toledo had lived in California since 2016, when he returned to Stanford University, his alma mater, as a visiting professor to study education in Latin America. His ties to the San Francisco Bay Area date back to the 1970s, when he was a student at the University of San Francisco and then a graduate student at Stanford University.
Toledo, 77, is one of four former presidents linked to the Odebrecht corruption scandal that has rocked Peruvian politics, with nearly all living former presidents being prosecuted or under investigation.
Former president Ollanta Humala is on trial on charges that he and his wife received more than $3 million from Odebrecht for their presidential campaigns in 2006 and 2011. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who concluded his presidency in 2018, is prohibited from leaving the country.
In addition, former President Alan García, who ruled from 2006 to 2011, took his own life with a shot to the head in 2019 while the police arrived at his home to arrest him.
