By Marco Aquino
LIMA (Reuters) -Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo returned on Sunday to Peru from the USA, changing into the third head of state to be imprisoned because the South American nation seeks to shake off years of corruption by its rulers.
Toledo, 77, has been ordered to serve a pre-trial detention of 18 months inside a police base on the outskirts of the capital Lima, an official assertion mentioned.
Former presidents Alberto Fujimori and Pedro Castillo are held on the similar jail.
Citing well being points, Toledo’s lawyer informed reporters that he would search permission for him to be positioned below home arrest as a substitute.
Toledo, president between 2001 and 2006, had turned himself in on Friday for extradition and arrived on Sunday morning on the airport in Lima.
Peruvian authorities have accused Toledo of receiving $35 million in bribes from the Brazilian building firm Odebrecht in alternate for successful the development of the Interoceanica Sur freeway.
He denies the allegations of corruption by prosecutors, whose expenses embrace cash laundering and collusion. They’ve requested a 20-year jail sentence.
The extradition course of started in 2018. Toledo had been declared a fugitive in his nation the earlier 12 months when he traveled to the USA amid corruption investigations in opposition to him and others.
Toledo, an economist with a doctorate from Stanford College, grew to become the second former Peruvian president to be extradited. Fujimori was extradited from Chile and is serving a 25-year jail sentence for human rights abuses.
In the meantime, Castillo is in pre-trial detention whereas being investigated over allegations of “riot” after making an attempt to illegally dissolve Congress in December.
Former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski can be being investigated within the Odebrecht case and was below home arrest whereas former president Alan Garcia shot himself within the head to keep away from arrest in 2019 and died in hospital.