LIMA: A Peruvian judge issued an international arrest warrant on Thursday for former president Alejandro Toledo and said he should spend up to 18 months in jail while prosecutors investigate him for allegedly taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian builder Odebrecht SA.
Judge Richard Concepcion said evidence uncovered so far in a graft probe, including testimony from an Odebrecht executive and bank records, warranted putting Toledo in “preventive prison” while charges of influence peddling and money laundering were prepared.
In issuing an arrest warrant, Concepcion said Toledo appeared to have used the “high office of the presidency” to “make an illegal pact” to sell off a highway project that promised to integrate the region.
Toledo, who rose to power denouncing the corruption of his predecessor, has repeatedly denied taking bribes from Odebrecht. Toledo was in France last week and absent from the hearing.
If found guilty, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, lead prosecutor Hamilton Castro said.
Toledo “laughed at Peruvian society, he laughed at the expectations Peruvian society had for... clean public work projects,” Castro told the court hearing into the prosecutor’s request for “preventive prison” for Toledo.
Toledo’s attorney Heriberto Benitez accused the judge of having a “vengeance” and said he would appeal against the ruling.
“He can’t come back... I wouldn’t recommend it,” Benitez told reporters. “With judges like this, careful!”
The government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who served as Toledo’s finance minister and prime minister a decade ago when the contracts were awarded, said it would offer a reward for information leading to Toledo’s capture if he did not turn himself in.
Odebrecht has been at the centre of a growing graft scandal in Latin America since admitting to doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from Peru to Panama.
The revelation, made in US courts in December, threatens to implicate presidents and former presidents who once promoted the hydroelectric plants, highways and irrigation canals that Odebrecht has built in the past two decades. — Reuters
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