Since the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, gave the green light for the extradition of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo in February, the politician accused of corruption has tried to delay his return to Peru even further with almost impossible legal remedies.
But Toledo's more or less placid stay in his Californian refuge ended this Friday, when he voluntarily appeared before a court in the city of San José, a step prior to being put on a plane and sent to his country.
Toledo waited until the last day to turn himself in, fulfilling the deadline established by the US justice system. Now, the 77-year-old ex-president will enter a Californian prison from where he will only leave to fly to Peru, a country he left in 2017, coinciding with the first accusations against him. The date of his arrival in Peru is still unknown, although it could be in the next few hours.
The former president (2001-2006), who this Friday entered the courts through a secondary door to avoid the press, is accused of collecting 20 million dollars from the Brazilian company Odebrecht in exchange for a highway concession.
The conservative politician was declared a fugitive when he settled in California at the end of 2017 without any intention of responding to Peruvian justice.
In the seventies, Toledo, of humble origin, studied thanks to scholarships at the universities of San Francisco and Stanford, in that US state.
On the eve of his delivery to the Californian justice, Toledo gave an interview to the EFE news agency where he asked the Peruvian judges not to allow "his death in prison."
