QCOSTARICA – The Public Ministry announced Monday that the US$6.6 million dollars connected to a case of alleged corruption by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) that was deposited in Costa Rican banks, will pass into the hands of the State of Costa Rica.
“The Fiscalía Adjunta de Legitimación de Capitales y Persecución Patrimonial (Deputy Prosecutor for Money Laundering and Patrimonial Persecution) achieved, within a process of emerging capital, that the company Ecostate Consulting Group S.A. be sentenced to the loss of US$6,635,267 dollars, an amount that will become property of the State for lack of of lawful cause,” detailed the Public Ministry.
Read more: Costa Rica Freezes $6.5 Million Linked to ex-Peru President’s Family
Costa Rican authorities froze around the amount from the US$20 million dollars involved in the Ecoteva case, the investigation into the bribes the former Peruvian president, his mother-in-law, Eva Fernenbug, and the security chief during his government, Avraham Dan On, allegedly received from Brazilian company Odebrecht.
Employees of a Costa Rican (unnamed) bank were helping the defendants move the money around.
“According to the investigation, employees of a private Costa Rican bank would have offered facilities in the procedures for the defendants to enter and diversify approximately US$20 million dollars in the Costa Rican financial system, money that had been granted to Toledo and his collaborators by the Brazilian company Odebrecht, in the framework of a mega-corruption case that dotted several Latin American countries,” added the Costa Rican Public Ministry.
Costa Rican prosecutors are still dealing with Toledo, Fernenbug and Dan On. Toledo is also being tried in Peru for allegedly receiving US$34 million dollars from Odebrecht through companies in tax havens.
The 77-year-old former president was arrested in 2019 and spent 8 months in prison before being placed under house arrest due to the covid-19 pandemic.
The former Peruvian President was first arrested in California in 2019. He was then granted bail in 2020 and ordered to live under house arrest. Last September the US Department of Justice approved his extradition to Peru and was finally extradited last April and is currently in pretrial detention while awaiting trial for his links to the Odebrecht scandal.
