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Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo challenges extradition in California federal court

Peru will have 3 former presidents imprisoned, since they will have to serve their sentence in the prison built in a police base in Lima where Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) are imprisoned

El expresidente peruano Alejandro Toledo
El expresidente peruano Alejandro Toledo | EFE

February 24, 2023 7:17am

Updated: February 24, 2023 7:17am

The United States authorized the extradition of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) for corruption crimes, the Peruvian Prosecutor's Office reported Tuesday.

"It has been learned that the Department of State of the United States of America granted the extradition of Alejandro Toledo Manrique, for the crimes of collusion and money laundering," the Public Ministry said in a message on Twitter.

The Prosecutor's Office indicates that it is "coordinating" with "national and foreign" authorities for "the next execution of his extradition."

However, the legal defense of the former Peruvian president will file an appeal to challenge the extradition in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.

The Peruvian authorities hope that Toledo will be sent to Lima in a matter of days.

The Latin American country will soon have three former presidents imprisoned, since they will have to serve their sentence in the prison built in a police base in Lima where Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) are imprisoned.

Toledo is accused in his home country of receiving tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Brazilian company Odebrecht in exchange for favoring it in his business in Peru, when he was still president.

Resident in the United States, he was arrested in July 2019 accused of corruption.

The Prosecutor's Office requests a sentence of 20 years and six months in prison against Toledo, who has admitted that Odebrecht paid at least 34 million dollars and that he received part of that money, but assures that he is innocent and that he was a deceased businessman, Josef Maiman, the person in charge of those businesses, according to the Peruvian press.