A Peruvian court on Tuesday sentenced ex-president Ollanta Humala and his wife to 15 years in prison for graft linked to a globe-spanning corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction group Odebrecht paying bribes to politicians.
The court found the 62-year-old and his wife Nadine Heredia guilty of money laundering for receiving illegal contributions from Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government in two presidential campaigns.
Humala was taken into custody in the courtroom after the ruling, and Judge Nayko Coronado ordered the arrest of Heredia, who did not attend the sentencing hearing.
Humala, a former army officer who led the country from 2011 to 2016, became in 2022 the first Peruvian ex-president to go on trial in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, which has also seen three other former presidents implicated.
Two-term leader Alan Garcia committed suicide in 2019 when police came to his house to arrest him, while Alejandro Toledo (in power from 2001-06) was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for accepting multi-million-dollar bribes in exchange for government contracts.
Investigations continue into the fourth ex-president who was implicated, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (in office from 2016-2018).
Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison term for Humala and 26 years for Heredia for accepting $3 million in illegal contributions for his 2011 campaign from Odebrecht.
The company is considered responsible for one of the biggest foreign bribery schemes in history.
– Bribes for influence –
The pair were also charged with illegally diverting about $200,000 sent by Venezuela’s then-president Hugo Chavez for Humala’s failed 2006 campaign, and Heredia with “concealment of real estate purchases” made with some of the money.
They have consistently denied all charges, and Humala’s legal team said he would appeal the sentence.
In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay $3.5 billion in penalties in Brazil, the United States and Switzerland arising out of payments of more than $788 million in bribes to foreign leaders and government officials in order to win infrastructure projects.
The company admitted having paid at least $29 million in bribes to Peruvian officials between 2005 and 2014.
Leftist Humala came to the presidency in 2011 after beating right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in a runoff election.
Fujimori herself spent 13 months in detention in a case linked to Odebrecht.