Former Peruvian President, Oranta Humara, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for committing money laundering.
Lima, the capital, said Humara had accepted illegal funds from Brazilian construction company Oud Brecht to bankroll the election campaign in 2006 and 2011.
His wife, Nadine Heredia, co-founded the Nationalist Party with Humara, but was sentenced to 15 years after committing money laundering.
Heredia has been granted exile by Brazil and has a safe passageway for traveling with her son, Peru’s Foreign Ministry said.
Prosecutors asked Humara to be sentenced to 26.5 years in prison and Heredia.
After more than three years of trial, the court handed out its long-awaited verdict on Tuesday.
Humala took part in the verdict directly while listening to his wife via video links.
The 62-year-old former president and his wife had denied any misconduct.
Humara, a former army officer who fought against the rebels on the glorious Maoist path, first became prominent in the nation in 2000 when he led a short-lived military rebellion against then-President Alberto Fujimori.
In 2006 he ran for president. He formed an alliance with the Venezuelan president at the time, and Hugo Chavez and prosecutors alleged that Humara had accepted illegal funds from Chavez to fund his campaign.
His rival to the presidency, Alan Garcia, used the close relationship between Chavez and Humara as a way to attack him, warning voters not to “change Peru into another Venezuela.”
In 2011, Humala again competed in the presidency. This time it was done on a more moderate platform.
He said that rather than emulating Chavez’s socialist revolution in Venezuela, he would model the policy of then-Brazil President Lucio Lula da Silva.
His approach was successful, and he defeated his right-wing rival Fujino Keiko.
However, violent social conflicts early in his presidency quickly dented his popularity.
He also lost the support of many members of Congress, further weakening his position.
His legal issues began shortly after his term ended in 2016.
That year, Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht confessed that he would pay hundreds of millions of dollars of bes to Latin American government officials and political parties to win business orders.
Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions of dollars from Odebrecht.
A year later, the judge ordered the couple to be placed in pre-trial custody.
They were released a year later, but the investigation into the link with Odebrecht continued, leading to today’s verdict.
