Judge OKs bail for Peru’s expresident but delays release
A federal judge said Thursday that former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo Manrique, held in solitary confinement in a Bay Area jail, is entitled to be released on bail while challenging extradition to Peru on bribery charges.
Contrary to arguments by the U.S. Justice Department, Toledo poses no risk of fleeing and could be released safely to home confinement in Menlo Park with electronic monitoring while his case is pending, said U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco. He cited testimony that Toledo’s mental health has deteriorated during nearly three months at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he spends 47 of every 48 hours alone in a small cell.
But the ruling does not guarantee Toledo’s release. Chhabria postponed the effective date of his decision until Oct. 22 and said he would extend it by another week if the federal government filed an emergency appeal or proposed “alternative detention” that would not involve solitary confinement. Federal prosecutors are considering possible transfers to other jails.
Toledo, 74, has spent most of his life in the Bay Area, arriving as a penniless student at age 19 and attending the University of San Francisco and Stanford University, where he earned a doctoral degree and later became a professor. He returned to Peru in the mid1990s, started a political organization and led the opposition to autocratic President Alberto Fujimori. He ran twice for president and was elected in 2001 after Fujimori resigned.
The first indigenous Peruvian to hold the office, Toledo led a government that favored business and free trade, boosting Peru’s economy and reducing poverty while clashing at times with labor unions. His reputation and public support were damaged by personal scandals, including an outofwedlock child. His term ended in 2006.
Toledo returned to Northern California and became a teacher and researcher at Stanford, returning once to Peru for another presidential campaign that was unsuccessful.
In February 2017, Peru’s government charged him with taking $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that won a major highway contract during his administration, and laundering it through several companies and offshore accounts to evade detection.
Odebrecht, one of the largest construction companies in Latin America, has been enmeshed in bribery scandals in Brazil and elsewhere. In 2016, the company paid $2.6 billion in fines to the U.S. and Swiss governments and admitted paying bribes to gain contracts. Toledo has denied the charge and said he never received any of the $20 million. His lawyers also say Peru’s government has seized all of his property and his pension.
U.S. prosecutors ordered Toledo arrested in July and held without bail to await extradition. In court papers, Justice Department lawyers noted that bail is seldom granted in extradition cases and said Toledo is a “significant flight risk” who has numerous contacts abroad. They also said he had been questioned by Peruvian authorities in January 2017 but “has deliberately chosen to stay in the United States rather than return to Peru to face the charges.”
Toledo’s lawyers said he had cooperated with the investigation, made no attempt to flee and has neither the desire nor the funds to do so. They said his Peruvian passport has expired, and Peru has sent a warning notice to Interpol, which would arrest him if he tried to cross an international border. Meanwhile, eight longtime friends have agreed to put up a total of $1 million for bail, his lawyers said.
Chhabria said Thursday that Toledo had shown “special circumstances” justifying his release. Unless granted bail, the judge said, Toledo will likely be held in solitary for many months, or even years, for an extradition proceeding involving untested legal issues and thousands of documents in several languages.
In addition, he said, Toledo “has longstanding ties to Northern California, and two of his closest friends would lose their home,” which they have pledged as security, if he fled after being released.
Chhabria said any risk of flight would be reduced by home confinement and electronic monitoring, but he also gave prosecutors the option of proposing other detention arrangements.