Peru's former first lady arrives in Brazil for asylum to evade prison
Peru 's former First Lady Nadine Heredia and her youngest son arrived in Brazil on Wednesday after the neighboring country granted her asylum, her lawyer and the foreign ministries of both countries said.
A spokesperson at Brazil's Foreign Ministry confirmed that Heredia's flight arrived in the capital, Brasilia, at around 12 p.m. local time, but did not provide more details.
Earlier, Heredia's lawyer Julio Espinoza told Peruvian radio RPP that she departed early Wednesday on an official plane provided by the Brazilian government.
On Tuesday, a Peruvian court sentenced Heredia and her husband, Former President Ollanta Humala to 15 years in prison for laundering funds received from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht to finance his 2006 and 2011 campaigns.
Humala, who attended the court session, was immediately jailed, while Heredia, 48, took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy with their son, Samin Humala, 14.
On Tuesday night, Peru's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Brazil granted diplomatic asylum to the former first lady and her son under a 1954 convention to which both countries are signatories. The ministry said Peruvian authorities granted them safe passage to Brazil.
Peru's Foreign Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Former First Lady Heredia's brother, Ilán Heredia, also was sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering in the same case.
The judges of Peru's National Superior Court found that Humala and Heredia received almost $3 million in illegal contributions for political campaigns from Odebrecht and the government of then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).
Humala, a 62-year-old retired military officer, came to power in 2011 after defeating right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori in the second round.
The trial began in 2022, and alongside Humala and his 48-year-old wife, the court convicted eight others. Both Humala and Heredia were held in pretrial detention from 2017 to 2018 at the prosecutor's request to prevent their flight.
Odebrecht's 2016 admission of widespread bribery across Latin America preceded the initial investigations against Humala, which started in 2015, a year before the company's revelations.
Most of the presidents who governed Peru since 2001 have faced legal problems due to their connections with Odebrecht. Toledo is currently imprisoned, while former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is under house arrest. Alan García, who served two non-consecutive terms (1985-1990 and 2006-2011), died by suicide in 2019 as authorities moved to arrest him in connection with Odebrecht bribes.
Beyond former presidents, prominent figures like former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori and numerous ex-governors are also under investigation.
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It was staffed by bloodhounds from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA and others with one mission: "To destroy MS-13, a vile and evil gang of people," Trump said at the time. Vulcan tore into the task. While winning terrorism and drug indictments against MS-13's Ranfla, or board of directors, investigators discovered a group that was closer to an armed insurgency than a traditional street gang. Drugs? Of course. Human trafficking? Naturally. But also: Trained strike battalions, rocket launchers, and power over life and death stretching from New York's Long Island to Central America, prosecutors said. The U.S. lawmen also found Faustian bargains had been made with MS-13 by El Salvador's old-guard political parties, who were desperate to lower a stratospheric murder rate - and by Nayib Bukele, the self-styled reformer who had promised to clean things up. Comandante Ramiro Bukele, the son of a businessman, dropped out of college and worked in advertising before he gained the attention of the FMLN, the political party of El Salvador's former communist insurgents. In 2011 he won the mayoralty of Nuevo Cuscatlan, just outside the capital. Despite a population of just 8,000, Bukele used the town as a megaphone. Exploiting social media in ways new to El Salvador, he was seen as a progressive newcomer and caught the eye of the man who would serve as his political godfather. Jose Luis Merino was a Communist guerilla commander during El Salvador's bitter 12-year civil war and became a deputy minister for foreign investment after FMLN won the presidency in 2009. Merino was the party's main link to the governments of Hugo Chavez and, later, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, which used oil money to support leftist movements across the region. 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MS-13 members who were not incarcerated were brought into prison meetings with government ID cards "identifying them as intelligence or law enforcement officials," the indictment said. In those talks, gang leaders "agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in upcoming elections," the U.S. Treasury department said, while announcing sanctions on Bukele's top negotiators. MS-13 demanded an end to extraditions, shortened sentences, and control of territory. In return, the gang agreed to "reduce the number of public the impression that the government was reducing the murder rate," the indictment says. "In fact, MS-13 leaders continued to authorize murders where the victims' bodies were buried or otherwise hidden." Human rights groups found that, even as El Salvador's official murder rate fell, reported disappearances went up - a trend that started before Bukele was elected president. Bukele, who sold himself as a trailblazer, used the same playbook as his predecessors - only more effectively, people familiar with the operation said. The Salvadoran president's gang associations go back to his time as mayor of the capital, San Salvador. El Faro newspaper reported on a December 2015 phone call that police intercepted between two MS-13 members in which one brags that he's prepping for a meeting with top aides to San Salvador's mayor - Bukele - at a shopping mall Pizza Hut."Monday at 10 at Multiplaza, we're all meeting up," one says. "The mayor already said 'Yeah.'" After the meeting, El Faro reported, police stopped the two Bukele aides and released them without arrest. The cozy dealings appeared to end in March 2022, when three days of violence took 87 lives in the tiny Central American country. Bukele declared a temporary state of emergency that's been renewed every month since, and El Salvador's prison population swelled to 110,000; many of these detainees have been charged with "illicit association." The devil's 'apostle' and the former mayor One person who, prosecutors allege, knows plenty about Bukele's deals with MS-13 is Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, an original member of the gang's "12 Apostles of the Devil." Until recently, Lopez-Larios was based in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting trial on charges that included plotting terrorist attacks in the United States. But on March 11, John Durham, then-interim U.S. attorney for New York's Eastern District, asked federal Judge Joan Azrack to drop the charges. Durham, who earlier led the Vulcan task force, cited "sensitive and important foreign policy considerations." Six days later, Lopez-Larios was seen among dozens of Venezuelans being dragged off a deportation flight and processed in El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison. The White House hailed his deportation. "It's very telling that the price Bukele demanded" for imprisoning U.S. deportees at CECOT "was the return of these MS-13 leaders who were poised to testify in court," Malinowski said. (Trump has touted a reported $6 million payment to Bukele's administration for holding the deportees as a bargain.) Another top MS-13 leader, Elmer "Crook de Hollywood" Canales-Rivera, remains in U.S. custody, though people familiar with the case fear he too could be returned before trial. The Bukele administration secretly freed Canales from a Salvadoran prison in November 2021, gave him a handgun, and dropped the alleged terrorist at the Guatemalan border, U.S. prosecutors said. Task Force Vulcan tracked Canales to Mexico. He was captured and deported to the U.S. where he awaits trial. A person familiar with the case said that, like Lopez-Larios, Canales was directly involved in negotiations with Bukele - describing him as Bukele's crown jewel. Another Bukele opponent who may soon return to El Salvador is Norman Quijano, who served as president of the national assembly and is a former mayor of San Salvador. Quijano fled El Salvador in 2021, hours before his parliamentary immunity expired, and sought political asylum in the United States. He was convicted in absentia of seeking support from MS-13 and the Barrio 18 gang in a failed 2014 run for president with the conservative ARENA party. Now 78, Quijano is the highest-ranking Salvadoran official convicted of gang ties in prosecutions that experts say have targeted the opposition while sparing Bukele's associates. A person familiar with Quijano told USA TODAY the politician had paid for gang support in his 2014 run - but he was outbid by Bukele's then-party, the FMLN, which paid more than double what Quijano could raise. Quijano lost by a whisker with 49.89% of the vote. Quijano was tried by Salvadoran Judge Godofredo Miranda. In February 2020, Miranda ruled in a separate case that he could "infer" the FMLN's 2014 gang negotiations "particularly impacted the election for mayor of San Salvador at the time," which Bukele won before later breaking with the party. "It is therefore mandatory to verify the existence of any close contacts between the MS gang and the current Cabinet," the judge wrote of Bukele's presidency. ICE agents arrested Quijano on March 6, days before the Trump administration dropped charges against MS-13 leader Lopez-Larios. Quijano is being held at a Texas detention facility. His attorney couldn't be reached; family members did not reply to calls and messages seeking comment.
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