The wife of former President Ollanta Humala, the former Peru-first lady Nadine Heredia, attracted attention on Wednesday (16) for obtaining asylum from Brazil after being sentenced, next to her husband, 15 years in prison for alleged money laundering.
The funds would have been unlawfully received by her and the former president of the Brazilian contractor Odebrecht and the administration of former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to fund Humala campaigns of 2006 and 2011.
Heredia, who was a legal representative and president of the Peruvian nationalist party, founded by her and Humala in 2005.
Born in Lima, Studied Social Communication in Peru and made a doctorate in Political Science at the Sorbonne University of Paris.
According to the magazine “Cosas”, to which he gave an interview when first lady and president of the nationalist party, she and the former president married in 1999, three years after they met. At the time, the Peruvian politician acted as a military man and traveled frequently.
According to the report, Heredia is the cousin of the mother of Humala, which makes her a second degree aunt of her husband. Both were presented as cousins, and the next day she received a call from him, with whom she ended up starting a relationship.
Mother of three children with Humala -the youngest of them, underage, too -she generated discomfort in sectors of Peruvian policy in the period as the first lady for her ability to protagonism and supposed influence on her husband’s government.
In 2011, she obtained 64.2% approval, the highest rate among members of the Humala team. Acting in her husband’s activities and trips, she also appeared in various acts without him, only with her ministers. Research of the time situated as the third most powerful person in the country.
That same year, the Wikileaks leakage revealed that former US-Basker in Lima, Michael McKinley, said Heredia was called “the radical political brain behind Humala.”
In 2015, with her husband still in the presidency, she began to be investigated by a congressional committee on suspicion of corruption against a former government-arrested administrator Martín Belaunde. The investigation was to determine if it used influences for companies linked to this to obtain advantages in contracts with the state.
At the time, there was already suspicions that Belaunde would have received funds from the Chavista government to finance the Humala campaign.
Months after her husband left Power in Peru in 2016, Heredia was appointed as director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) binding office in Geneva.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Administration of Humala Successor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as PPK, protested against the decision, which attributed to the UN agency director general at the time, Brazilian José Graziano da Silva.
“This appointment does not respond to any management of the Peruvian government,” expressed the note of the Peruvian Chancellery, who said he expressed his “displeasure” by the “decision that can be interpreted as an interference in a process fiscal investigation in Peru.”
The PPK government asked the Brazilian to reconsider the decision. Heredia eventually resigned.
Prosecutors accused Humala and Heredia, leader of Humala’s nationalist party of receiving $ 3 million in Odebrecht’s illicit funds to fund Humala’s campaign in 2011. They argued that the couple could escape or obstruct their work unless it was arrested.
