The United States has agreed to extradite former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo on corruption charges.
Peru’s attorney general’s office made this known Tuesday on Twitter that the US State Department had agreed, Reuters said.
The 76-year-old former leader was arrested in the US in 2019 after Peru formally requested his extradition.
Peruvian authorities alleged that Toledo, who governed the Andean country between 2001 and 2006, took bribes of more than $25 million from Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht in exchange for help securing public works contracts.
“We do not have a set deadline (for the extradition) at the moment, but it is unlikely to take months,” Alfredo Rebaza, the head of the attorney general’s extradition office, said on the Canal N television station.
Rebaza also added that logistics would now begin with Interpol and US authorities to facilitate the extradition.
Toledo, who as of August 2022 resided in California, following his release from prison on bail in 2020, has denied demanding or getting bribes and has not been criminally charged in the US.
Last August, the US Department of Justice said it would return to Peru about $686,000 seized from Toledo.
Federal prosecutors in the New York City borough of Brooklyn said Odebrecht had paid Toledo $25 million in bribes for highway construction contracts.
A U.S. judge cleared the way for Toledo’s extradition in 2021, saying evidence of criminality presented in his case was “sufficient to sustain the charges of collusion and money laundering,” but final say fell to the State Department.
