Ollanta Humala Released From Peru Prison After Court Overturns Conviction

Peru’s former President Ollanta Humala was released on Friday, July 31, after the country’s Constitutional Court overturned his 15-year money-laundering conviction. According to Reuters, the Constitutional Court annulled the center-leftist former leader’s conviction on Thursday afternoon, paving the way for a criminal court to order his release the following evening.

Humala had been serving his sentence at a special detention facility that houses several of Peru’s jailed former leaders. His conviction last year stemmed from allegations that he received illicit campaign contributions from Odebrecht during his successful 2011 presidential campaign. Speaking to journalists at the prison gates upon his release, Humala criticized the proceedings against him and his family.

Ollanta Humala, former President of Peru, stated that they had needed to persecute his family because of their administration and political ideology, and added that those proceedings had forced him to seek asylum for his wife and to take his children out of the country.

Constitutional Court Legal Reasoning and Odebrecht Case History

According to Peru’s Constitutional Court, the tribunal 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 this exact legal reasoning when it previously threw out a similar case last year involving President Keiko Fujimori, who had also been investigated over alleged campaign contributions linked to Odebrecht, according to Reuters reporting.

The legal battles followed a three-year trial that itself followed an investigation launched in 2016. Throughout the proceedings, Humala denied wrongdoing. Upon walking out of detention on Friday, he maintained his innocence regarding the long-running corruption allegations.

I was taken hostage by the state and by the hitmen of the justice system. Ollanta Humala, former President of Peru

Nadine Heredia’s Asylum Status and Prosecution Silence

The corruption case also ensnared Humala’s wife, Nadine Heredia, who received a prison sentence in the same matter. While her husband was imprisoned in Peru, Heredia traveled to Brazil after being granted asylum by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as reported by Reuters. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Peru did not issue any comments following Humala’s release from the special detention facility on Friday evening.

The sprawling judicial fallout from Odebrecht’s operations across Latin America has impacted much of Peru’s political establishment over the past decade, drawing in multiple former leaders before the Constitutional Court’s rulings reshaped the legal landscape for campaign contribution cases originating from that era.