Peru makes first arrest in Odebrecht corruption case

Peruvian prosecutors have arrested the country's first suspect in a multinational corruption case involving bribes and kickbacks from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

Edwin Luyo Barrientos, a former government official, was arrested late Friday in the capital Lima on charges of accepting some 1.4 million U.S. dollars in bribes in connection to the construction of the first stretch of the city's Line 1 electric rail in 2009.

That year, according to the public prosecutor's office, Luyo was president of the bidding committee for Lima's rail line.

Officials failed to arrest a second suspect, former deputy minister at the Ministry of Transportation and Communication (MTC), Jorge Cuba Hidalgo, after searching his home, and believed he left the country at the end of last year.

Information supplied by Odebrecht reveals the man granted the Brazilian builder the contract in exchange for kickbacks.

A second payment of 6.7 million U.S. dollars was solicited for the second stretch of the line.

In all, investigations show Odebrecht paid more than 29 million U.S. dollars in bribes to Peruvian officials in exchange for lucrative public works contracts during the administrations of former presidents Alejandro Toledo, Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala from 2001 to 2016.

The scandal exposed at the end of December, following Brazilian media reports Odebrecht had admitted to paying more than one billion U.S. dollars in bribes across much of Latin America and parts of Africa.

source: Xinhua