A Peruvian court on Wednesday handed former President Alejandro Toledo a second prison sentence for money laundering and corruption in a case tied to bribes he received from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
Toledo, who led Peru from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced to 13 years and four months for money laundering, the judiciary said on X. It was his second conviction in connection with the sprawling scandal. His latest sentence will not be added to his existing 20-year prison term but will run concurrently at Lima’s Barbadillo Prison, where three other ex-presidents are also jailed.
The court found the 79-year-old guilty of using Odebrecht bribe money to buy high-value real estate, prosecutors said. According to state news agency Andina, Toledo funneled the funds through an offshore company in Costa Rica to hide their origin.
Nearly a year ago, another court sentenced Toledo after finding he had taken $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for awarding contracts to build two sections of the Interoceanic Highway in southern Peru.
Toledo is among several former Peruvian leaders implicated in the case. Last April, ex-president Ollanta Humala was sentenced to 15 years for accepting Odebrecht bribes to finance his 2006 and 2011 election campaigns.
That same day Toledo was sentenced, a court ordered the release of former President MartĂn Vizcarra. He had been in pretrial detention since last month on charges of taking bribes more than a decade ago while governor of the Moquegua region.
In 2018, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned following the release of secret recordings that tied him to the scandal, a day before an impeachment vote. Former President Alan GarcĂa died by suicide in 2019 as police investigated his alleged involvement.
The Odebrecht bribery scheme, which originated in Brazil, has implicated politicians across Latin America. In Panama, two former presidents, six ex-ministers and dozens more stood trial in 2022 over alleged kickbacks. In Guatemala, records reviewed by OCCRP and partners in a 2023 investigation showed the company used millions from a Central American Bank for Economic Integration loan to bribe state officials.
The Odebrecht case is considered one of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandals. In 2017, U.S. courts ordered the company—now renamed Novonor—to pay $2.6 billion in fines to Brazil, Switzerland and the U.S. after admitting it had paid around $800 million in bribes across 12 countries.
