CNN
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Former Peruvian First Lady Nadine Heldia fled to Brazil. There, a court in his home country was granted diplomatic asylum after he sentenced her and her husband, former President Olanta Humala to 15 years in prison for money laundering.
She landed in the capital, Brasilia, with her son on Wednesday, her lawyer, Giulio Espinoza, told CNN.
According to Peru’s Foreign Ministry, she had requested asylum at the Brazilian embassy in Lima on Tuesday morning. Brazil granted her and her son asylum, and the Peruvian government provided assurances for their safe passages, it said.
Heredia’s lawyer said he applied for asylum on unspecified family reasons.
“The family and personal decisions happened two or three hours before the verdict,” he said, and he only learned about her request for asylum through the media.
Her arrival in Brazil comes one day after she and her husband were sentenced in trials on alleged illegal contributions to Humala’s election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.
Prosecutors had alleged that Humala’s nationalist party had received illegal contributions from the Venezuelan government and Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund his campaign.
Humara and his wife had denied any misconduct.
Humala was in attendance when the judge read the verdict on Tuesday, three years after the trial began. Heredia was not present.
After the sentence was announced, the judiciary ordered Humala to be immediately served and sent to prison.
His lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, criticised the decision as unfair and told CNN they would appeal.
“The panel says the illegality of a crime can be verified along the way. That is unacceptable. Here, in verbal trials and judgments, we must assert, and it is no longer a presumption,” he argued.
The former First Lady lawyer said Wednesday that if the case is appealed, she could effectively attend a hearing from Brazil.
Prosecutors were hoping for 26 years in a 20-year prison for the former president and a former First Lady.