Peru’s ex-president returns home to face corruption charges
LIMA, Peru — Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo arrived Sunday in Lima after being extradited from the United States to face charges that he received millions of dollars in bribes in a corruption scandal that has ensnared four of the country’s ex-presidents.
Toledo, who was president from 2001 to 2006, surrendered to U.S. authorities on Friday, ending a legal battle against his extradition that started in 2019, when he was arrested at his home in Menlo Park, Calif.
Police and officials from Peru’s prosecutor’s office received Toledo, 77, early Sunday at Lima’s airport. Police released a photo of Toledo accompanied by agents. He was transferred to a court in the capital’s historic center.
Toldeo will serve 18 months of preventative detention while he is investigated for allegedly taking at least $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that has admitted to U.S. authorities that it bribed officials for decades to win contracts throughout Latin America.
Toledo has denied the charges.
The pinniped known as Freeway contracted a progressive disease before being rescued last year, SeaWorld said.
After his arrest in California, he was held in solitary confinement at the Santa Rita Jail, about 40 miles east of San Francisco, but was released in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and his deteriorating mental health. He was held under house arrest after that.
He had sought a stay on his extradition, pending a legal challenge to the U.S. State Department’s decision to send him back to Peru, but a court of appeals denied his latest motion, and a federal judge ordered him to surrender.
Toledo had been living in California since 2016, when he returned to Stanford University, his alma mater, as a visiting scholar to study education in Latin America.
Prison officials in Peru have not decided where Toledo will be held but have said it could be the prison that holds former presidents Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and Pedro Castillo (2021-22). Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence for his role in the murders of 25 Peruvians during his administration. Castillo is being held in pretrial detention while being investigated for rebellion in attempting to dissolve Parliament in 2022.
Nearly every living former president is now on trial or under investigation.
Toledo is one of four ex-presidents linked to the Odebrecht corruption scandal.
Former President Ollanta Humala is standing trial on charges that he and his wife received more than $3 million from Odebrecht for his presidential campaigns in 2006 and 2011. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who left office in 2018, is under house arrest for similar charges.
Alan García, in office from 2006 to 2011, died in 2019 after shooting himself in the head as police arrived at his home to arrest him.
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