Former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and his wife, Nadine Heredia, will face from this Monday the beginning of the oral trial for alleged irregular financing of the 2006 and 2011 electoral campaigns by the construction company Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez.
Seven years after the investigation began, Humala and his wife, his main collaborator during the government, will face the first oral trial against a former Peruvian president in the Lava Jato case, whose investigated corruption has spread to several Latin American countries.
Like Humala, ex-presidents Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), pending extradition from the United States, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018), who has been under house arrest for four years, are also being investigated.
Prosecutors also surrounded former president Alan García (2006-2011) with investigations. As they were preparing to arrest García at his home in Lima in 2019, the former president shot himself in the head.
In Peru, Odebrecht admitted to bribing senior officials between 2005 and 2014 to win key public works contracts and also allegedly irregularly financed the campaigns of former candidates, including Keiko Fujimori.
20-year sentence for Humala
The opening of the trial against Humala was scheduled for Monday by the Third National Collegiate Criminal Court, presided over by Judge Nayko Coronado and also composed of magistrates Raúl Caballero and Max Vengoa.
However, sources connected to the case told Efe that the start of the oral trial could be delayed, although no official announcement has yet been made.
In the indictment, prosecutor Germán Juárez, who leads an investigation opened in 2015, asked for 20 years in prison for Humala and 26 years in prison for Heredia for not declaring the millionaire donations with which the former president’s first two election campaigns were financed.
Alleged support from Chavez and Lula
According to the prosecutor’s thesis, in 2006 the money would have come from the late former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), and in 2011 they allegedly received US$ 3 million from Odebrecht by order of the Workers’ Party (PT).
During the time of the investigation, the former Peruvian president and his wife spent almost ten months in pre-trial detention separated in different penitentiaries between July 2017 and April 2018, until the Constitutional Court ordered their release on the grounds that the measure was excessive.
Once released, Humala and Heredia had to face the embargo of their residence and the seizure of assets as a preventive measure to ensure the collection of compensation in favor of the State, in case they were convicted in a trial that was still far from starting.
Same deposition requested for Keiko
At the hearings to present the charges, Prosecutor Juárez will have to prove that the accused were aware that the funds allegedly received were of illicit origin, since at the time of the events it was not a crime to falsify campaign accounts, and sentences were considered an administrative offence.
Given that Juárez will have to request judicial cooperation from Brazil so that the statements of the construction company’s owner, Marcelo Odebrecht, and the former director in Peru, Jorge Barata, support the case, prosecutor José Domingo Pérez, who is investigating Keiko Fujimori, will request that these statements be used as “anticipatory evidence” in the future trial against the former presidential candidate.
Along with Humala and Heredia, 11 other people are also accused, including Ilán Heredia and Antonia Alarcón, the brother and mother, respectively, of the former first lady.
Another of the accused is businessman Martín Belaunde Lossio, a former campaign adviser to Humala in 2006, captured in 2015 in the Bolivian jungle, when he had fled to avoid prosecution for corruption and spying on political opponents within the government of the Ancash region.
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