According to the Peruvian attorney general’s office, the United States has approved the extradition of former President Alejandro Toledo to face corruption charges, and the Peruvian legal system has been cooperating with national and foreign authorities to carry out the decision. On Wednesday, the public prosecutor’s office tweeted, “We have been notified that the US State Department authorized the extradition of Alejandro Toledo Manrque for the crimes of cooperation and money laundering.”
As president of Peru from 2001 to 2006, Toledo is wanted on charges of accepting bribes totaling millions of dollars from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which is at the center of a massive corruption investigation spanning much of South America. Extradition was requested from Brazil in 2018. In 2019, US officials imprisoned Toledo, but by 2020, he was under home arrest. Attorney General’s Extradition Office Chief Alfredo Rebaza stated on the Canal N television station, “We do not have a set deadline [for the extradition] at the moment, but it is unlikely to take months.” The extradition process will now begin with the logistics being worked out with Interpol and the US authorities. In September 2021, a US court found that the accusations against Toledo were sufficient to warrant his extradition under the terms of the US-Peru extradition treaty. Yet, the State Department’s approval was necessary before further action could be taken by the United States government. As of August 2022, Toledo was a California resident; he denied requesting or accepting bribes and was not charged with a crime on US soil. After stepping down as president, Toledo has made the United States his permanent home. He returned briefly in 2011 to seek reelection but was soundly beaten. The Peruvian prosecutor assigned to Toledo’s case has asked for a sentence of 20 years and 6 months in jail for his involvement in a case involving the building of two segments of a highway connecting southern Peru with Brazil.
Peruvian media reports that Toledo has confirmed that he got a portion of the $34 million that Odebrecht paid, but that he is innocent of the allegations and that a deceased businessman named Josef Maiman was in charge of the business activities. The United States Department of State had not commented on the decision to approve Toledo’s extradition as of Wednesday morning. The ex-president is only one of several previous presidents of Peru who are now in court or who have been convicted on corruption accusations. Money laundering allegations have also been made against ex-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Alan Garcia, another ex-president who was facing arrest, took his own life in 2019.
