Peruvian former President, Ollanta Humala and his wife, Nadine Heredia, have been sentenced to 15 years in prison by a court in Lima over their involvement in bribery and corruption.
Humala and Heredia were sentenced following their conviction for illicitly funneling $3 million from from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht, and $200,000 from the government of then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Prosecutors alleged the former president received the illicit funds in his 2011 campaign against Keiko Fujimori, the other former president’s daughter, through Humala’s Nationalist Party.
During his trial, which lasted three years following an investigation that kicked off in 2016, Humala decried the charges as political persecution.
Humala’s lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, also said that the couple were victims of political persecution, adding their 15-year sentence was “excessive”.
However, the delivering judge, Nayko Coronado, after listening to the prosecuting counsel, who presented concrete evidence against him, sentenced the ex-president to jail.
Humala, a retired military officer who led the Andean nation from 2011 to 2016, will likely carry out his sentence on a police base built specially to house Peru’s jailed leaders.
Former presidents Alejandro Toledo and Pedro Castillo are currently jailed at the site, while the late Alberto Fujimori stayed there for 16 months until his release in 2023.
Toledo, in power from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for accepting $35m in bribes in exchange for government contracts.
Former President Pedro Castillo is also being detained as he faces charges of “rebellion” after a failed attempt to dissolve Congress in 2022.
