Brazil suspends legal cooperation with Peru over Odebrecht case

According to a document to which EFE had access on November 1, Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry determined the suspension of the legal cooperation agreement with Peru concerning the Odebrecht case following a request from the company.

The decision was taken in response to a lawsuit by Novonor, formerly Odebrecht, which denounced the violation by Peruvian authorities of the agreement signed between the two parties.

It included the “non-use of evidence produced in Brazil” against the company in that jurisdiction.

The Brazilian agency determined the “suspension, for now, of the legal cooperation” with Peru until the Peruvian authorities present new clarifications given the “seriousness and verisimilitude of the information” alleged by the company, according to a document from the Public Prosecutor’s Office dated October 31.

According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the allegations are “garnished” with evidence proving the alleged breach of the collaboration agreement signed between Odebrecht and Peru and the violation of “fundamental rights and guarantees of the signatories” of these agreements, among other aspects.

OLLANTA HUMALA AND LINKAGE

The suspension of the agreement would imply the postponement of the interrogations of several former Odebrecht employees. The interviews were scheduled for November as witnesses in the oral trial against former President Ollanta Humala.

Humala is being prosecuted, along with his wife, Nadine Heredia, for alleged irregular financing of the Nationalist Party during the 2006 and 2011 election campaigns. He is also facing a 20-year prison sentence for money laundering.

Humala is the first former Peruvian president to go to trial in the Lava Jato scandal, even though Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), the late Alan García (2006-2011), and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2006-2008), as well as Keiko Fujimori, who has run three times for the Peruvian presidency, have also been accused of money laundering.

Odebrecht signed a collaboration agreement with the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office in 2018, a process by which the company acknowledged the corruption cases and agreed to make reparations to the State for the civil damages caused by the bribes offered over the years to obtain works.

With information from El Comercio