Peru’s attorney general’s office announced Tuesday via Twitter that the State Department has given the go-ahead to extradite Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s former president on corruption charges.

Mr Toledo, 76, was arrested by US authorities in 2019 when Lima formally requested his extradition.

Peruvian authorities accuse the former president (2001-2006) of accepting bribes worth more than $25 million from the giant Brazilian construction group Odebrecht in exchange for awarding him public contracts.

“We don’t have a fixed deadline (for the extradition) at the moment, but it is unlikely to take months,” Alfredo Rebasa, head of the public prosecutor’s office’s extradition department, told Canal N television, adding that procedures would begin in coordination with the Interpol and US authorities.

Mr Toledo, who was living in California in August 2022 after being released on parole after posting bail in 2020, has repeatedly denied taking bribes. He is not facing criminal charges in the US.

Neither the former president nor his defense in the Latin American state were available to comment on the development.

In August, the US Department of Justice announced that it would hand over to Peruvian authorities approximately $686,000 in the former president’s possession that was seized.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, say Odebrecht paid more than $25 million to the former president to secure public road construction contracts.

A US judge cleared the way for Mr Toledo’s extradition in 2021, ruling that the evidence presented to him in his case was “sufficient to support charges of conspiracy and money laundering”. However, the US State Department had the last word.

A Peruvian prosecutor is calling for Alejandro Toledo to be sentenced to 20 years and 6 months in prison for the case, which is linked to the construction of two sections of a highway linking southern Peru to Brazil.

The political class in Peru has been swept in recent years by a series of scandals linked to Odebrecht.

Former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski also faces a money laundering investigation. Another former president, Alan Garcia, committed suicide to avoid arrest in 2019.