Justice internationale
Ollanta Humala freed after his conviction is annulled
Peru's Constitutional Court announced on Thursday 31 July 2026 that the entire criminal case against former president Ollanta Humala, sentenced in April 2025 to fifteen years in prison for money laundering in the Odebrecht affair, was void. The ruling, adopted by five votes to two (judgment no. 169/2026), holds that the irregular financing of his 2006 and 2011 campaigns was not classified as money laundering at the time of the events. Humala left Barbadillo prison after roughly fifteen months in detention. Other proceedings against him, notably those linked to the Southern Peruvian Gas Pipeline, remain pending.
What the comparison reveals
What everyone says
- Peru's Constitutional Court declared the entire criminal proceedings against Ollanta Humala null, leading to his immediate release from Barbadillo prison, with no perspective presenting the ruling as an acquittal on the merits.
- Every perspective reports the same statement by Ollanta Humala on leaving prison: that he had been "kidnapped" by the State or by the judiciary.
- The case goes back to the funding of his 2006 and 2011 presidential campaigns with money linked to the Odebrecht scandal, for which he had been sentenced in April 2025 to fifteen years in prison for money laundering.
Where it breaks apart
- Scope of the ruling — Peru, Brazil and France frame the annulment as a narrow procedural decision with no bearing on the merits, whereas Chile gives extensive play to Humala's reading of judicial persecution and Ecuador sees a political precedent liable to reopen other Odebrecht files in the region.
- Regional reach of the precedent — Ecuador and Chile stress that the Constitutional Court's reasoning, already applied when closing Keiko Fujimori's file, could inspire other Odebrecht proceedings across the Andean region — a case-law reading absent from the Peruvian, Brazilian and French perspectives, which centre on Humala's individual case.
- Geographic centre of gravity — Brazil pulls the narrative back towards its own borders, stressing the Brazilian origin of the Odebrecht scandal and the political asylum granted to Nadine Heredia in Brasília, while Peru details the national proceedings still pending against Humala (corruption, the Southern Peruvian Gas Pipeline, enforced disappearance).
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