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Peru’s former president Ollanta Humala has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for laundering money received from Venezuela and the Brazil-based construction company Odebrecht.
The National Superior Court in Lima on Tuesday sentenced Humala, the leftwing leader of the country from 2011 to 2016, along with his wife Nadine Heredia.
The court found the couple had received more than $3mn in illegal financing, both from Odebrecht and the government of Venezuela’s late socialist president Hugo Chávez, that was used in Humala’s 2006 and 2011 presidential campaigns. Eight others were also convicted.
During the hearing, judge Noyka Coronado said Heredia received US dollars in cash in suitcases and backpacks at Venezuela’s embassy in Lima, which was to be used for the 2006 election campaign.
“From our evidence [we can say] that this money came from an illicit source,” Coronado said, and ordered Humala’s immediate detention.
Police surrounded Humala as he left the courtroom. His wife Heredia, also a prominent politician, was absent from the hearing.
Peru’s foreign ministry on Tuesday afternoon confirmed she had entered Brazil’s embassy in Lima earlier in the day and requested asylum.
“Both governments are in permanent communication over this situation,” Peru’s foreign ministry said.
Humala is the country’s third former president to be convicted of corruption in the past 20 years. Alejandro Toledo, who led the country between 2001 and 2006, was sentenced in October last year for receiving a $35mn bribe from Odebrecht. The late Alberto Fujimori, who died in September, was also convicted of corruption and human rights abuses.
Leftist former president Pedro Castillo, who was arrested in December 2022 after attempting to close congress and rule by decree is also in prison. He has yet to be sentenced.
Humala will serve his sentence in the Barbadillo prison facility specially built to house ex-presidents on the outskirts of Lima, the capital, where Toledo and Castillo are also being held.
Two other former Peruvian presidents have been implicated in the sprawling investigation into Odebrecht, which is one of the largest corruption cases to have hit Latin America, with politicians implicated in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, among others.
Alan García, another former president who was implicated, killed himself in his home in 2019 as prosecutors attempted to arrest him, while Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who succeeded Humala as president in 2016, has been accused of taking bribes and placed under house arrest.
Political instability has shaken Peru as a result of the ongoing corruption probe, with the country cycling through six presidents since 2016. The scandal has also hit the private sector, with Brookfield Asset Management in March launching arbitration proceedings against the country over a toll road concession acquired from Odebrecht in 2016.
“When [the Odebrecht investigation] broke out 10 years ago, the political system collapsed,” said Rodolfo Rojas, who runs Sequoia, a Lima-based political risk consultancy.
“All of this atrophied the country’s public procurement system and generated a political crisis as the leaders of the main parties that had presided over Peru were under investigation, or imprisoned, while one, Garcia, was dead.”