He was handed 20 years and six months in prison.Â
Toledo, who served as president from 2001 to 2006, allegedly took $35 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, now known as Novonor. The company was awarded a contract to build two sections of the Interoceanic Highway in southern Peru.
Judge Inés Rojas stated that Peruvians had “trusted” Toledo as their leader, but instead of “protecting and ensuring the correct” use of public resources, he chose to “defraud the state,” according to an AP report.
Authorities are also investigating two other former Peruvian presidents, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Ollanta Humala, in connection with the Odebrecht scandal. A fourth former president, Alan GarcĂa, committed suicide in 2019 as police probed allegations that he, too, had taken bribes from the disgraced firm.
Toledo’s sentencing represents the most recent in one of the largest corruption cases in recent Latin American history which saw the Brazilian firm pay off politicians, political parties, officials, lawyers, and bankers in Brazil and abroad. Odebrecht did so using an encrypted payments system run by U.S. officials described as a “Department of Bribery,” according to the BBC.
In 2017, U.S. courts ordered Odebrecht to pay $2.6 billion in fines to Brazil, Switzerland, and the U.S. after the company was found to have distributed around $800 million in bribes to secure public contracts in 12 countries.
In Panama, 35 individuals—including two former presidents, six ex-ministers, and numerous officials—stood trial for charges related to the Odebrecht scandal.
Records seen by OCCRP and partner organizations in a 2023 investigation show that Odebrecht used millions of dollars from a Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) loan to pay off Guatemalan state officials.
