A Peruvian court has ordered Jorge Barata, a former Odebrecht executive in that country, to be held in preventive detention for 36 months for alleged aggravated collusion in the Gasoducto del Sur case, awarded to the Brazilian construction company by the former Peruvian president.
Judge Leodán Ayala, of the Sixth National Preparatory Investigation Court, declared the petition filed by prosecutor Geovanna Mori, responsible for the case against former Peruvian president Ollanta Humala, his wife, Nadine Herédia, and other defendants in the same case, for allegedly receiving millions in contributions from Odebrecht for their electoral campaigns, to be admissible.
The decision by the Peruvian court, reported today by local media, indicates that preventive detention will begin when Jorge Barata, who lives in Brazil, surrenders to the International Police (Interpol) or to the Peruvian judicial authorities, through active extradition.
In this regard, the judge gave Jorge Barata ten days to make himself available to the court for the execution of the preventive measure, with the warning that, if he does not do so voluntarily, he will ask Interpol to locate him.
The judge based his decision on the "strong suspicion" of Barata's alleged participation in "six acts of alleged aggravated collusion" in the context of the Kuntur and Gasoducto del Sur projects.
Ayala added that, "from the execution phase of the first [work] until the award of the second", collusion had materialized between Barata, as Odebrecht's representative in Peru, Humala and his wife with the aim of "defrauding the State" to benefit their private interests.
The court considered that preventive detention is necessary because there are no other measures that are as or more effective to control or safeguard the presence of the person under investigation in connection with the case, since he is "outside the territorial scope of the jurisdiction" of the court.
The former Odebrecht executive had an effective collaboration agreement with the Peruvian Public Prosecutor's Office, through which he admitted to the illegal contributions made in several cases linked to former presidents Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala and Alan García in the context of the Lava Jato scandal, but this agreement was annulled last June, when he refused to testify in the case against Humala.
Humala and Heredia are currently facing another trial for contributions from Odebrecht and others to their 2006 and 2011 election campaigns, for which they face prison sentences of 20 and 26 years, respectively, for alleged money laundering.
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