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Peru’s former president, Ollanta Humala, has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
A court in the capital, Lima, said that Humala had accepted illegal funds from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to bankroll his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.<\/p>\n
His wife, Nadine Heredia, who co-founded the Nationalist Party with Humala, has also been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had asked that Humala be sentenced to 20 years in jail and Heredia to 26 and a half years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After a trial lasting more than three years, the court gave its long-awaited verdict on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Humala attended the verdict in person while his wife heard it via video link.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old former president and his wife had denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Humala, a former army officer who fought against the Maoist Shining Path rebels, first came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-lived military rebellion against then-President Alberto Fujimori.<\/p>\n
In 2006, he ran for president. He allied himself with the Venezuelan president at the time, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, and prosecutors alleged that Humala had accepted illegal funding from Ch\u00e1vez to finance his campaign.<\/p>\n
His rival for the presidency, Alan Garc\u00eda, used Humala’s close ties to Ch\u00e1vez as a way to attack him, warning voters “not to let Peru turn into another Venezuela”.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Humala ran for the presidency again, this time on a more moderate platform.<\/p>\n
He said that rather than emulating Ch\u00e1vez’s socialist revolution in Venezuela, he would model his policies on those of the Brazilian president at the time, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva.<\/p>\n
His approach proved successful and he defeated his right-wing rival, Keiko Fujimori. <\/p>\n
But violent social conflicts early on his presidency quickly dented his popularity.<\/p>\n
He also lost the support of many members of Congress, further weakening his position. <\/p>\n
His legal troubles started shortly after his term had finished in 2016.<\/p>\n
That year, the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht confessed to paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and political parties across Latin America, to win business orders.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions of dollars from Odebrecht.<\/p>\n
A year later, a judge ordered that the couple be placed in pre-trial detention.<\/p>\n
They were released after a year but the investigation into their links with Odebrecht continued, culminating in today’s verdict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n