Peruvian authorities await the speedy extradition of former President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) from the United States, after it was confirmed that the State Department had agreed to hand him over to the Andean country for crimes of corruption linked to the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
“The National Prosecutor’s Office, as the central extradition authority, informs that it has been learned that the Department of State of the United States of America has granted the extradition of Alejandro Toledo Manrique, for the crimes of collusion and money laundering”, detailed the Public Prosecutor’s Office on Twitter.
The Public Prosecutor added that the National Prosecutor’s Office for International Judicial Cooperation and Extradition “has coordinated with national and foreign authorities for the next execution of his extradition”.
In this regard, the head of the Public Ministry’s Extradition Office, Alfredo Rebaza, pointed out that the Prosecutor’s Office expects the former president to be “within days” in the Andean country.
“It could take a few days, I don’t know how long, but we understand that the decision of the United States in both stages, the judicial one as well as the executive one, granted the extradition from the Peruvian State”, did he declare. said on Channel N
From now on, he said, “a stage of coordination has been born” between the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministries of Foreign Relations and the Interior, and the International Police (Interpol), with the American authorities.
Toledo is accused in his country of having received tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for having favored him in his business in Peru, when he was still president.
Specifically, the former president was investigated for the alleged commission of the crimes of money laundering, collusion and influence peddling, in relation to the contracts awarded to the Brazilian company for the construction of the interoceanic route 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 be released from prison and placed under house arrest in March 2020, with the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic.
Last September, the American justice gave the green light to his extradition to Peru, having found sufficient evidence to justify this measure, although the final decision was left in the hands of the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
In the Peruvian chapter of the Odebrecht affair, Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal, former presidents Alan García (2006-2011), Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018), as well as three-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.