Ex-president jailed pending corruption trial
PERU: A Peruvian judge yesterday ordered the Andean nation’s former President Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia to be jailed for up to 18 months while prosecutors prepare formal money laundering charges against them.
Judge Richard Concepcion ruled in favour of a request by prosecutor German Juarez, who argued Humala and Heredia should be jailed before the trial to prevent them from fleeing or interfering with his nearly three-year investigation.
‘‘Their immediate capture internationally is ordered,’’ Concepcion said.
Humala and Heredia deny wrongdoing but were on their way to turning themselves into authorities, their lawyers said after the ruling. ‘‘They’re not fleeing. They never intended to flee,’’ said defence attorney Wilfredo Pedraza.
Juarez accuses Humala and Heredia of taking illegally obtained funds from late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazilian construction companies Odebrecht SA and OAS SA that were allegedly used in Humala’s campaigns and for personal enrichment.
Concepcion’s ruling against the couple comes a day after former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for corruption and is a further blow to the political Left in the region.
Humala ran an unsuccessful presidential bid in 2006 as an ally of Chavez before winning the 2011 election when he recast himself as a more moderate leftist like Lula.
Juarez said the money from Odebrecht and OAS was the product of corruption and the funds from Venezuela were pilfered from that country’s treasury.
‘‘Here’s a president who rose to the presidency and governed us with an electoral campaign built on illicit money. That’s serious,’’ Juarez told Concepcion.
The ruling marked the second time a former Peruvian president has been ordered behind bars since Odebrecht acknowledged in a plea deal with United States and Brazilian prosecutors in December that it paid bribes across Latin America over a decade.
Peru’s centrist former President Alejandro Toledo, believed by Peru to be in the US, has refused to turn himself in since Concepcion ordered him to be jailed for up to 18 months before a graft trial.
– Reuters