Peru: ex-President Ollanta Humala sentenced to 15 years in prison in the corruption case “Odebrecht”

In Peru, the fate of the Presidents of the Republic is … to finish in prison. Over the past twenty years, Peruvian prisons have welcomed the former chiefs of the executive Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Alejandro Toledo, or Alberto Fujimori. Here is now a new one: former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala, 62, was sentenced this Tuesday to 15 years in prison for money laundering in the context of the corruption scandal linked to the Brazilian BTP Odebrecht.

Ollanta Humala is the second among four former Peruvian presidents to be splashed by this vast business which led dozens of political leaders and business leaders under the locks. “A sentence of 15 years of effective imprisonment is pronounced against Ollanta Humala,” said the judge in charge of the case, Nayko Coronado.

Humala, who appeared free, came out of the court supervised by police, but not handcuffed. This conviction comes more than three years after the start of the trial against the former president who governed Peru from 2011 to 2016.

The Odebrecht company has distributed a total of $ 788 million for more than a decade in a dozen Latin American countries to win public procurement contracts, according to the United States Ministry of Justice. The company acknowledged having paid $ 29 million in bribes to Peru between 2005 and 2014.

His wife also condemned

Ollanta Humala’s wife Nadine Heredia, also prosecuted in this case, received 15 years in prison. Absent from the hearing, the judge ordered her arrest. The couple had been imprisoned preventively for nine months until April 2018, as part of this case.

Both were found guilty of having received illegal $ three million illegal funding from Odebrecht during the electoral campaign that led Ollanta Humala to power in 2011.

Nadine Heredia was questioned by the former Odebrecht leader in Peru, the Brazilian Jorge Barata, who told Peruvian investigators to have given him the money personally. The Humale couple were also found guilty of having diverted, during the 2006 campaign, around 200,000 dollars sent by the Venezuelan president of the time, Hugo Chavez, through a company in this country.

Money received from Hugo Chavez?

The prosecution had requested 20 years in prison against Ollanta Humala and 26 years old against his wife, also accused of having concealed funds for “purchasing of real estate with the money from Odebrecht”.

The couple denied during the trial having received money from Hugo Chavez or any Brazilian company.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, German Juarez, declared himself with the press satisfied with the sentence, believing that it had been taken in compliance with legality, with objectivity and impartiality “.

Ollanta Humala is the second of the four Peruvian presidents involved in the Odebrecht scandal.

Alan Garcia (2006-2011) committed suicide in 2019 before being arrested, and Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) was sentenced in 2024 to more than 20 years in prison for having received millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for public procurement. The trial of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) has not yet taken place.