Former Peru President Sought for Corruption Denied U.S. Bail
Judge Cites Suitcase Full of Cash as Ex-Peru Leader Denied Bail
(Bloomberg) -- Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo must remain in a California jail while fighting an extradition request on corruption charges from the South American country.
U.S. Magistrate Thomas Hixson on Thursday rejected Toledo’s request to be released, saying the risk is too high that the former president might flee and the assets he had offered to put up as security weren’t adequate.
Toledo had agreed to post a $1 million bond, made up of cash and property put up by friends and family, including the home of two retired teachers in Washington State.
“Peru doesn’t want a house in Washington,” Hixson said. “They want Dr. Toledo.”
Toledo is wanted by Peruvian authorities on charges that he received $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht S/A. U.S. Marshals arrested him on an extradition warrant on July 16, with $40,000 in cash in a suitcase.
Toledo served as Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006.
Graham Archer, Toledo’s lawyer, said the once-celebrated reform politician has been held in administrative segregation, essentially in solitary confinement, at Santa Rita Jail outside Oakland.
Toledo’s mental state is deteriorating and he’s showing increased signs of depression, Archer said.
As the 73-year-old former president was led away from the San Francisco courtroom in a red jumpsuit, his wife, Eliane Karp, stood up and yelled at the judge, “You will be responsible for his death.”
She kept protesting as bailiffs dragged her from the courtroom. “It is the life of a man, goddammit!,” she shouted. “What are they doing? They are killing him.”
The judge has also rejected a proposal to put Toledo under house arrest with GPS monitoring. GPS monitoring is ineffective to keep people from fleeing because the devices sometimes are not checked for 12 hours, Hixson said.
Archer also said that his client’s financial situation has deteriorated since Peru accused him in 2017 of taking millions of dollars in bribes.
He wouldn’t have the money to flee the U.S. even if he wanted to, Archer said.
A lawyer for the U.S. disagreed. “There are millions of dollars that are still unaccounted for,” said Rebecca Haciski of the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
In a plea bargain with the U.S., Brazil and Switzerland, Odebrecht in 2016 admitted to having set up a vast bribery network that doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to politicians in Latin America and Africa to win construction contracts.
Apart from Toledo, three other former Peruvian presidents have been embroiled in the scandal, including Toledo’s successor as president, Alan Garcia, who shot himself in April as police arrived at his Lima home to arrest him.
--With assistance from Stephan Kueffner.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Burnson in San Francisco at rburnson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew Bristow at mbristow5@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, David Glovin
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