A Peruvian court on Monday sentenced former President Alejandro Toledo to more than 20 years in prison after he was convicted of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from construction company Odebrecht.

The Superior Court accepted the prison term recommended by the prosecution, it announced at a hearing attended by Toledo, who was the Peruvian president from 2001 to 2006.

Brazilian construction company Odebrecht became synonymous with corruption in its home country and across Latin America, where it paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and others between 2001 and 2016. The company has since been renamed Novonor. 

South America's biggest corruption scandal

According to prosecutors, Toledo was convicted of taking $35 million (€32.2 million) in bribes from the Brazilian firm, in exchange for letting it win a contract to build a road that now connects Peru's southern coast with an Amazonian area in western Brazil.

The cost of the 650-kilometer (400-mile) road then bloated from its original price of $850 million to $2.1 billion.

Toledo has denied the money laundering and collusion charges against him. 

Monday's sentence was imposed by the National Superior Court of Specialized Criminal Justice in Lima, following years of legal tussles, including a debate over whether Toledo could be extradited from the United States, where had been living for several years.

The ex-president was extradited from the US after he surrendered at a federal court building in California.

Judge Ines Rojas said Toledo's victims were Peruvians who "trusted" him as their president. 

Rojas said that in that role, the former president was "in charge of managing public finances" and responsible for "protecting and ensuring the correct" use of resources.

Instead, the judge said, he "defrauded the state."

Toledo, 78, who says he has cancer and heart problems, asked the court last week to let him serve his sentence at home. "Please let me heal or die at home," he said.

dvv/jsi (AP, AFP, Reuters)