Brazil’s Supreme Court votes to sentence former President Collor de Mello to prison for corruption

Most Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justices voted Thursday to sentence former president (1990-1992) and former senator Fernando Collor de Mello to prison for passive corruption and money laundering.

Six members of the court, which temporarily has 10, voted in favor of the conviction against the former president for having participated in 2012, when he was a national senator, in a fraud linked to a subsidiary of the state-owned oil company Petrobras, while one magistrate voted for acquittal.

The rapporteur of the case, Justice Edson Fachin, asked on Wednesday for 33 years and ten months in prison for the former leader, considering that the existing evidence in the case proves the facts.

After today’s vote, the session was suspended and will resume next Wednesday, 24, when the three judges who have not yet voted will have to do so, according to the official Agência Brasil.

Collor de Mello, 73 years old, was the first president elected by direct vote in the 1989 general elections, the first to be held after the end of the military regime (1964-1985).

In 1992, however, he resigned over a corruption scandal after Congress approved an impeachment trial against him.

The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR) accuses the former president of receiving bribes of more than R$29 million (about US$5.8 million) from two business people who closed contracts with Petrobras and who are on trial.

With information from Xinhua

News Brazil, English news Brazil, Brazilian politics, Fernando Collor de Mello