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Peru’s former President Ollanta Humala has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for receiving money from Venezuela and the Bouwbedrijf Odebrecht, based in Brazil.
The National Superior Court in Lima convicted Humala on Tuesday, the left -wing leader of the country from 2011 to 2016, together with his wife Nadine Heredia.
The court discovered that the couple had received more than $ 3 million in illegal financing, both Van Odebrecht and the government of the deceased socialist President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was used in the presidential campaigns of Humala 2006 and 2011. Eight others were also convicted.
During the hearing, Judge Noyka Coronado said that Heredia received American dollars in cash in suitcases and backpacks at the Venezuela embassy in Lima, which had to be used for the 2006 election campaign.
‘From our proof [we can say] That this money came from an illegal source, “said Coronado and ordered the immediate detention of Humala.
The police surrounded humala when he left the courtroom. His wife Heredia, also a prominent politician, was absent in the hearing.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that she had entered the Brazilian embassy in Lima earlier in the day earlier in the day and asked for asylum.
“Both governments are permanent communication in this situation,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru.
Humala is the third former president of the country who has been convicted of corruption for the past 20 years. Alejandro Toledo, who led the country between 2001 and 2006, was convicted in October last year for receiving a $ 35 million bribes from Odebrecht. The deceased Alberto Fujimori, who died in September, was also convicted of corruption and human rights violations.
Leftistic former President Pedro Castillo, who was arrested in December 2022 after an attempt to close the congress and to rule by decree is also in prison. He still has to be convicted.
Humala will serve his sentence in the prison of Barbadillo, specially built to house former presidents on the outskirts of Lima, the capital, where Toledo and Castillo are also held.
Two other former Peruvian presidents are involved in the vast investigation into Odebrecht, one of the greatest corruption cases that have affected Latin -America, in which politicians are involved in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, among others.
Alan García, another former president who was involved, committed to his house in 2019 when prosecutors tried to arrest him, while Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who succeeded Humala as president in 2016, was accused of taking bribes and being placed under house arrest.
Peru has shaken political instability as a result of the continuing corruption probe, with the country cycling by six presidents since 2016. The scandal also affected the private sector, with Brookfield Asset Management in March that launches arbitration procedures against the country about a Toll Road Concession acquired in Odebrecht in 2016.
“When [the Odebrecht investigation] The political system collapsed, the political system collapsed, ”said Rodolfo Rojas, who runs Sequoia, a political risk consultancy-based in Lima.
“All this atrophile were the public purchasing system of the country and generated a political crisis as the leaders of the most important parties that Peru had challenged, were investigated, or trapped, while one, Garcia, was dead.”