Peru’s former president, Ollanta Humala, was on Tuesday sentenced to 15 years in prison for money laundering following allegations that he received illegal campaign funds during his successful 2011 presidential run.
Humala was accused of receiving money from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, now known as Novonor, to fund his campaign, according to Reuters.
The court also handed a 15-year prison term to his wife, Nadine Heredia, for her involvement in the same offence.
The retired military officer governed Peru from 2011 to 2016 and will serve his sentence at a special police base designed to house former Peruvian leaders convicted of crimes.
He will join former presidents Alejandro Toledo and Pedro Castillo, who are currently imprisoned in the country. Another former president, Alberto Fujimori, was also held at the facility until his release in 2023.
Prosecutors accused Humala of accepting illicit campaign donations from Odebrecht through his Nationalist Party to defeat Keiko Fujimori, daughter of ex-president Fujimori, in the 2011 election.
The investigation into the allegations began in 2016, leading to a three-year trial. Humala has consistently denied any wrongdoing, describing the charges as being politically motivated.
Despite his intention to appeal, the court ruled that Humala’s sentence will be enforced immediately.
Odebrecht, once a major force in Latin America’s construction industry, admitted to distributing bribes to secure lucrative public contracts across the region. The company rebranded as Novonor in 2020 and is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.
Humala is now the second Peruvian former president to be imprisoned over the sweeping “Lava Jato” corruption scandal and the fourth to be implicated.
In 2019, ex-president Alan Garcia took his own life as police arrived to arrest him for similar charges. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned in 2018 amid corruption allegations, and Alejandro Toledo was sentenced last year to 20 years for accepting $35m in bribes.
Executives from Odebrecht testified in Peruvian courts that the company financed nearly every major political campaign in the country for close to three decades.
