The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil decided on Wednesday, May 31, to sentence Fernando Collor de Mello to eight years and ten months in prison in a closed regime for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering. But Brazil’s president from 1989 to 1991 was not the first – Lula da Silva, Michel Temer and five others went through the same drama – and should not be the last – Jair Bolsonaro is in the crosshairs of the police – who want the comfort of the Palácio do Plateau through the pain of a prison cell.
For the majority of the court’s judges, Collor, aged 73, wrongly received 20 million reais [cerca de 3,7 milhões de euros] in contracts with BR Distribuidora, a subsidiary of the state oil company Petrobras, between 2010 and 2014, for which he made political appointments as leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party.
After six court hearings, the result of the vote ended on May 25 with eight votes to two in favor of the conviction, including that of the case’s rapporteur, Judge Edson Fachin, who had proposed a prison sentence of 33 years and 10 months. prison for the former president. But the reviewer, Alexandre de Moraes, ruled out the crime of criminal association, reduced the sentence, and was followed by most of his peers.
In addition to imprisonment, Collor is banned from holding public office and must pay a fine for moral damages. The fine is shared with Pedro Paulo Ramos and Luís Duarte de Amorim, appointed as the former president’s right-hand man, sentenced to four and three years respectively.
Since the defense must make “requests for clarification”, the arrest will not have immediate effect.
The “Maharaja Hunter”
Fernando Afonso Collor de Mello was born in 1949 in Rio de Janeiro, but it was in the state of Alagoas that he built a fast-paced career in politics. Son of former senator Arnon de Mello, known for shooting three times in the middle of the National Congress, another parliamentarian, José Kairala, who put himself in front of Silvestre Péricles, the target of the shots, Collor was mayor of Maceió, federal deputy to Alagoas and state governor under age 40.
As governor of Alagoas, he achieved national fame, calling himself a “maharaja fighter” and leading a campaign against officials with disproportionate salaries, becoming a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in 1989. In the elections, he defeated heavyweights in national politics in the first round, defeated Lula, of the Workers’ Party, in the second and became the first elected president after the end of the military dictatorship.
The mandate was marked by the “Collor Plan”, which included the confiscation of Brazilians’ savings, and allegations of corruption, some of which came from the president’s brother, Pedro, and implicated the treasurer PC Farias who managed a phantom account to pay personal expenses of the head of state and was to be murdered in a case that has still not been fully cleared up. Subsequently, the president was impeached and replaced by Vice President Itamar Franco.
In 2006, he returned to national politics as a senator for Alagoas. Last year, when he tried for his second re-election and passed himself off as an exuberant Bolsonaro supporter, he was finally defeated.
Incidentally, Bolsonaro is the latest evidence that there is a kind of “curse” against former presidents. On May 3, federal police executed a search and seizure warrant at the home of the former president, in Brasília, to investigate alleged covid-19 vaccination card fraud.
In 2023 alone, Bolsonaro is in the crosshairs over a scandal surrounding the embezzlement of Saudi jewels and his involvement in the January 8 attacks. But as of 2014, still a deputy, he is suspected of a total of 25 crimes, including for negligence in the pandemic, incitement to rape a deputy.
the curse
Lula, head of state from 2003 to 2010, who returned to power last year, was arrested from April 7, 2018 to November 8, 2019 for allegedly acquiring property under the corruption scheme known as Petrolão and investigated at Lava Jato .
However, in April 2021, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions for the Curitiba Federal Court’s incompetence to review them and for failing to prove the politician’s connection to the criminal group that embezzled money from Petrobras. Two months later, he still believed there was bias on the part of Judge Sergio Moro in the verdicts. Lula regained his political rights, ran for office and won the 2022 election.
Before him, Michel Temer, still in the presidency, was accused of negotiating bribes for millionaires as the leader of the “MDB gang”, his party, but was ultimately shielded by the National Congress, which rejected the charges. Already out of office, in March 2019, he was preventively arrested in Rio de Janeiro by Lava-Jato in the context of an investigation into corruption crimes at the plant of the Angra dos Reis nuclear power plant. In 2022, the court of Brasilia acquitted him.
The list of presidents who end up in prison does not end with contemporary politicians. After the 1964 military coup, the political rights of Juscelino Kubitschek, accused of corruption and allying with communists, were suspended. Participation in the Frente Ampla for the return of democracy to Brazil in 1967 resulted in several days in prison and months of house arrest.
Café Filho, Vice President of Getúlio Vargas when he committed suicide in 1954, was surrounded by a group of soldiers and locked in his apartment until he agreed to request his resignation. The military demanded the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek, the same person they would arrest in the next decade.
Artur Bernardes, president of Brazil between 1922 and 1926, was arrested in 1932 for supporting the constitutionalist revolution that tried to end the government of Getúlio Vargas. He then went into exile in Portugal for a year and a half.
Washington Luiz, who reigned from 1926 to 1930, also went into exile in Europe after a coup led by Vargas and was captured at Fort Copacabana.
Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, President of the Republic from 1910 to 1914, had an arrest warrant issued in 1922 by the then President, Epitácio Pessoa, for criticizing a measure of federal intervention in Pernambuco.
Source: DN
