The path to a trial in his country of the former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo becomes clearer after the extradition authorization granted by the United States where the former head of state has resided since the end of his mandate in 2006 .
“We have learned that the US State Department has granted the extradition of Alejandro Toledo Manrique, for the offenses of influence peddling and money laundering,” the Peruvian public prosecutor said in a post on Twitter. He said he was “coordinating” with “domestic and foreign” authorities with a view to “the forthcoming execution of his extradition”.
The Peruvian public prosecutor believes that the procedure could be completed soon. “No deadline has been set, but (…) we hope it will not exceed eight weeks,” Alfredo Rebaza, senior prosecutor in the Peruvian prosecutor’s office in charge of extraditions, told local radio RPP.
Arrested in 2019 and placed under house arrest in California
Toledo, 76, presided over Peru from 2001 to 2006, when he joined the United States at the end of his term. He returned to Peru in 2011 and 2016 to run for president but was defeated. In 2019, the ex-president was arrested in the United States for corruption in Peru. He has since been under house arrest at his California home and wears an electronic bracelet.
He is suspected of having received tens of millions of dollars from the Brazilian construction group Odebrecht, at the heart of a vast scandal in South America, in exchange for obtaining public contracts. Upon his arrival on Peruvian soil, he must be remanded in custody in connection with this case.
The prosecution is seeking a twenty-year and six-month prison sentence for Mr. Toledo, who admitted that Odebrecht paid at least $34 million and that he received part of this sum. However, he maintains his innocence, saying that it was a businessman now deceased, Josef Maiman, who handled the transactions, according to Peruvian media.
The former president is part of a list of former Peruvian presidents prosecuted or convicted for corruption: Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018), Martin Vizcarra (2018 -2020) and Pedro Castillo (2021-2022).
