Peru's ex-president has 15-year jail sentence for corruption charges overturned

Peru’s constitutional court has overturned a 15-year jail sentence handed to the country’s former president after he was found guilty of corruption.

Ollanta Humala, who led the country from 2011 to 2016, was convicted in 2025 of accepting illegal funds from the Venezuelan president and Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.

The former president had said he would appeal against the verdict, and now Peru’s constitutional court has declared the entire criminal proceedings against him null and void.

Humala is expected to be released from Barbadillo Prison in the capital Lima, according to local media.

After the ruling, Humala’s lawyer Julio Espinoza Goyena wrote on social media that the court had decided the contributions his client received on electoral campaigns “do not constitute money laundering”.

He said: “The Criminal Chamber currently handling the case must order the definitive dismissal of the proceedings and the FREEDOM of former President Ollanta Humala”.

When Humala was convicted, his wife Nadine Heredia was also found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However, she was granted safe passage to Brazil after seeking asylum in the Brazilian embassy.

Humala was the first of four Peruvian presidents to be investigated in connection with the Odebrecht scandal.

Alejandro Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006, was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for taking $35m (£26m) in bribes from the company.

Alan García, president from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011, killed himself in 2019 as he faced imminent arrest over allegations he was bribed by Odebrecht. He had denied the accusations.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in office from 2016 to 2018, faced impeachment proceedings after it emerged that Odebrecht had paid him millions of dollars in his previous government role.

The investigation is ongoing. Kuczynski has always maintained the payments were not illegal.

At their own trial, Humala and his wife, with whom he cofounded the Nationalist Party, were accused of accepting $3m in illegal contributions from the firm, which they used to finance his 2011 presidential campaign.

They were also accused of taking $200,000 from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to bankroll the 2006 campaign.

But the couple always maintained that they were the victims of political persecution.

Humala, a former army officer, came to national prominence in 2000 when he led a short-live military rebellion against then-president Alberto Fujimori.

In 2006, he ran for president on a platform inspired by the socialist revolution of Venezuela’s Chávez.

After an unsuccessful first attempt, Humala ran again in 2011; this time on a more moderate platform emulating the policies of Brazil’s then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to defeat right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, the eldest daughter of Alberto Fujimori.

His legal troubles started shortly after his term finished in 2016, when Odebrecht admitted to bribing Latin American government officials and political parties with hundreds of millions of dollars to win business.

Prosecutors accused Humala and his wife of receiving millions from Odebrecht, as well as the illegal funding from Chávez to finance the 2006 presidential campaign.

Humala and Heredia were subsequently placed in pre-trial detention for a year, before they were eventually convicted in 2025.