Eliane Karp, wife of Alejandro Toledo, flees to Israel to evade Peruvian justice

Alejandro Toledo and Eliane Karp, in a November 2016 file photo.Europa Press/Contact/El Comercio (Europa Press/Contact/El Comerci)

When Alejandro Toledo was extradited to Peru on Sunday, April 23, after a long judicial process, a question flew over the newsrooms: what would be the fate of Eliane Karp, the Belgian anthropologist who was the country's first lady between 2001 and 2006? Although Karp, of great prominence in that five-year period, has not been involved in the Odebrecht case, where her husband allegedly received a bribe of 35 million dollars to favor the Brazilian construction company with the award of the Interoceanic highway, she is accused of the alleged crime of money laundering for the Ecoteva case. Since 2017, she has been subject to an order of preventive detention of 18 months and since 2019 a request for a sentence of 16 years and eight months.

This morning Peru woke up with a rumor that was confirmed with the passing of the hours: Eliane Karp traveled Tuesday night on a commercial flight from San Francisco, where she had lived for decades, to Tel Aviv, the second most populous city in Israel. It was a fear that several lawyers and political analysts warned of in recent weeks. Rafael Vela, the prosecutor in charge, indicated that Karp had two possibilities to evade Peruvian justice: go to Belgium, his country of origin or Israel, where he has Jewish ancestry on his father's side. Peru does not have an Extradition Treaty with Israel. Karp was well aware of this, and having no impediment to leave the United States he chose the second option. This was confirmed this afternoon by Prime Minister Alberto Otárola: "the United States Department of Justice has informed the Embassy of Peru that he took a flight to Israel (...) Yes, the lady did indeed land in this country. Through the Foreign Ministry we will follow up on the case," he said succinctly.

Last week, Roberto Su, Alejandro Toledo's lawyer, denied the predictable: "She has Belgian and Israeli nationality, but at no time has she told me that she is going to escape or that she is going to leave (...) Eliane (Karp) already has her passport, she wants to come to Peru," he said. However, Su also made it clear that Karp would not return to Peru until the preventive detention order was rescinded, a measure that his sponsor considered "unfair" because in his view it was a reprisal for being Toledo's wife.

At the beginning of 2013, it was detected that Eva Fernenburg, mother of Eliane Karp and mother-in-law of Toledo, had made purchases of luxury real estate through her company Ecoteva Consulting Group. According to the tax thesis, it is an offshore company, incorporated in Costa Rica, through which the former presidential couple would have tried to camouflage the millionaire bribes they would have received from Brazilian construction companies. When the former leader of the political group Peru Possible was asked about the issue, he used to say that it was a "compensation that his mother-in-law had received for being a victim of the Holocaust", however, he could never prove that it was on the register of compensated persons.

Days after Toledo returned to the country he ruled in the early 2000s, Eliane Karp recovered her passport by order of Northern California Judge Thomas S. Hixson, who also ruled that the bail she paid with some collaborators to achieve her husband's parole in 2019 be returned. It is a million dollars whose half was paid in cash and the other with the insurance of real estate. The former first lady received $175,000 plus interest.

Recently, the Public Ministry said that it had sent all the necessary documents to the United States to support Karp's extradition request, but that everything was left in his hands. "The document was presented quite some time ago (December 2021), we ask for your qualification and response, but we are at the expense of what American legislation and its authorities refer," said Edgar Rebaza, head of the Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Extraditions.

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