Peruvian ex-President Humala released from prison after court overturns conviction

LIMA, July 31 (Reuters) – Peruvian ex-President Ollanta Humala was released from prison on Friday evening after Peru’s Constitutional Court overturned his 15-year money-laundering conviction.

Humala, who was serving his sentence at a special detention facility that houses several of Peru’s jailed former leaders, had been convicted last year over receiving illicit campaign contributions from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, now known as Novonor, during his successful 2011 presidential campaign.

“They needed to persecute us because of our administration and our political ideology, and they have forced me to seek asylum for my wife and to take my children out of the country,” the center-leftists former leader said at the prison gates upon his release.

The prosecution did not issue any comments following Humala’s release. 

Humala’s wife, Nadine Heredia, also received a prison sentence in the case but she is in Brazil after being granted asylum by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Peruvian courts overturned Humala’s conviction on Thursday afternoon, paving the way for a criminal court to order his release the next day.

The case formed part of a sweeping corruption investigation into Odebrecht’s operations across Latin America that ensnared much of Peru’s political establishment. President Keiko Fujimori, who was sworn in this week, was also investigated over alleged campaign contributions linked to the company. Peru’s Constitutional Court last year threw out that case.

During a trial that lasted three years following an investigation launched in 2016, Humala denied wrongdoing and described the charges as politically motivated.

“I was taken hostage by the state and by the hitmen of the justice system,” Humala told journalists after being released from detention.

Peru’s Constitutional Court said it had annulled Humala’s conviction because campaign contributions did not constitute the crime of money laundering at the time the alleged acts took place. The court relied on the same legal reasoning when it overturned proceedings against Fujimori last year.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino, Writing by Iñigo Alexander, Editing by Will Dunham and William Mallard)