Peru's ex-president and first lady sentenced to 15 years in prison
Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia have been found guilty of money laundering
- Published
Peru's former president, Ollanta Humala, has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
A court in the capital, Lima, said he had accepted illegal funds from the Venezuelan president at the time, Hugo Chávez, and from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to bankroll his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.
Humala's lawyer said he would appeal against the conviction.
His wife, Nadine Heredia, was also found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, she has been granted safe passage to Brazil after seeking asylum in the Brazilian embassy.
Humala's lawyer said he would appeal against the conviction.
Unlike her husband, Heredia was not present in court when Judge Nayko Coronado passed sentence - she had entered the Brazilian embassy along with the couple's son before an arrest warrant could be executed.
Brazil offered her asylum and the Peruvian government said it would honour the 1954 asylum convention to grant both Heredia and her son safe passage.
On Wednesday, Brazil's foreign ministry said Heredia had arrived in the capital Brasilia. She will travel from there to Sao Paulo, according to her lawyer.
The former president, 62, was meanwhile taken to Barbadillo prison, where two other former leaders, Alejandro Toledo and Pedro Castillo, are already being held.
Humala was the first of four Peruvian presidents to be investigated in connection with the Odebrecht scandal.
Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for taking $35m (£26m) in bribes from the company.
Alan García, president from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011, killed himself in 2019 as he faced imminent arrest over allegations he was bribed by Odebrecht. He had denied the accusations.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in office from 2016 to 2018, faced impeachment proceedings after it emerged that Odebrecht had paid him millions of dollars in his previous government role.
The investigation is ongoing. Kuczynski has always maintained the payments were not illegal.
Prosecutors said that Humala and his wife, with whom he cofounded the Nationalist Party, had accepted $3m in illegal contributions from the firm, which they used to finance his 2011 presidential campaign.
They also accused of taking $200,000 from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to bankroll the 2006 campaign.
The couple have always maintained that they are the victims of political persecution.
Humala's lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, also said that their 15-year sentence was "excessive".
Prosecutors had asked for 20 years for the ex-president and 25 and a half years for Heredia.
Ollanta Humala was escorted by police from court to prison after the verdict was announced
Who is Ollanta Humala?
Humala is a former army officer who fought against the Maoist Shining Path rebels. He first came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-lived military rebellion against then-president Alberto Fujimori.
In 2006, he ran for president on a platform inspired by the socialist revolution of Venezuela's Chávez.
Alan García, Humala's election rival, warned voters "not to let Peru turn into another Venezuela" and won the presidency.
In 2011, Humala ran on a more moderate platform emulating the policies of Brazil's then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to defeat right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, the eldest daughter of Alberto Fujimori.
Violent social conflicts quickly dented his popularity, and he lost the support of many members of Congress.
His legal troubles started shortly after his term finished in 2016, when Odebrecht admitted to bribing Latin American government officials and political parties with hundreds of millions of dollars to win business.
Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions from Odebrecht, as well as the illegal funding from Chávez to finance the 2006 presidential campaign.
A year later, a judge ordered that the couple be placed in pre-trial detention. They were released after a year but the investigations against them continued, culminating in today's verdict.