Alejandro Toledo among the most corrupt presidents in Latin America Hello Peru

The ex-president Alejandro Toledowanted by Peruvian justice for crimes of corruption, will remain free on bail until the appeal he filed weeks ago against his extradition approved by the United States Department of State.

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He Play Thomas S. Hixson, of the federal court for the Northern District of California, ruled this Thursday in favor of the defense of the former president, who had asked him to wait for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the said appeal.

Hixson decided to maintain Toledo’s freedom, although he assured that if the Ninth Circuit determined that the extradition should take place, it would order that he surrender. A few weeks ago, the government of the United States asked this judge that the politician enter preventive prisonsince the approval of his extradition could increase the risk of absconding.

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“My tentative thought is not to proceed with the government’s motion (to detain him) until the 9th Circuit rules on this,” Hixson said.

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Toledo himself, who appeared virtually, and his lawyer, assured that he would turn himself in if they lost the appeal, while the federal prosecutors who intervened in this case insisted on asking that he be detained.

Also attending the hearing were prosecutors Mara Goldman and Tamara Crepet, federal prosecutors Kyle Waldinger and Rebecca Haciski, and house arrest officer Anthony Granados and Eliane Karp, will express dama.

The health situation of Toledo (76 years old) has been another of the arguments used by his legal representatives throughout the process, since they consider that the final resolution “could take months”, which is why he “would languish while waiting in a cell” .

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This aspect was taken into account by the magistrate, who explained that he had decided not to imprison the politician for the moment, because as long as the appeal is still pending, there is no deadline for the ‘extradition.

Before today’s hearing begins, Toledo filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State, but now in a court in Columbia (USA), for wanting to extradite him without following due process and allegedly violating the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

The ex-president is accused of having received millionaire bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for favoring it in its business when he was still president. Specifically, he was investigated for money laundering, collusion and influence peddling for contracts awarded to Odebrecht for the construction of the interoceanic highway between Brazil and Peru.

The former president was arrested in 2019 in California, where he has resided for a few years, and spent 8 months in prison for flight risk, although he was able to get out of prison when he was released on bail due to of the pandemic.

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Last September, the US justice approved his extradition to Peruhaving found sufficient evidence to justify this measure, although the final decision remained in the hands of the State Department, which granted the extradition on February 23.

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In the Peruvian chapter of the “Odebrecht affair”, the biggest corruption scandal in Latin America, former presidents Alan García (2006-2011), Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) , as well as three at the time presidential, Keiko Fujimori.

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