The Brazilian president Fernando Collor De Mello was arrested in the early hours of this Friday at the airport of his hometown, Maceió, in the state of Alagoas, when he prepared to fly to Brasilia and surrender to the police, according to his lawyers. … The prison against Collor, who was president of Brazil in 1990 until his resignation for corruption in 1992, was decreed on Thursday night after being convicted of embezzlement and diversion of funds.
In a statement, the former president’s lawyer, Marcelo Besta, informed that his client was arrested at the airport at 4:21 in the morning, local time, when he was ready to “spontaneously abide by the judge’s decision Alexandre de Moraes», The magistrate of the Brazilian Supreme Court, who also steps on his heels to former president Jair Bolsonaro, denounced for an attempted coup d’etat.
The arrest occurred hours after Judge Moraes denied the resources presented by the former president’s defense against his sentence to 8 years and 10 months in prison. Collor was denounced by the Attorney General in 2015 for an investigation linked to Operation Lavacoches, the same for which Lula da Silva and other politicians in Brazil were convicted and prisoners in the last decade.
In his decision, Moraes ordered that the former president immediately comply with his sentence in a closed regime and pay compensation and fine equivalent to the value of the diversions discovered, for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering, crimes that would have occurred Between 2010 and 2014, when Collor was a senator.
Collor de Mello, 75, has been declared guilty of receiving bribes equivalent to 20 million reais (about four million euros) of the UTC Engenharia construction company in exchange for contracts with BR Distribuidora, the company that manages the petroleum gas stations of the oil company Petrobras, one of the diversion roads of the sink scheme. Entrepreneurs have also been condemned as accomplices Luis Pereira Duarte de Amorim and Pedro Paulo Bergamaschi, who was Minister of Collor. The sentence occurred in 2023, but the lawyers had managed to postpone arrest
Home arrest request
Judge Moraes submitted his decision to the plenary of the Supreme and the eleven magistrates of that court had to meet virtually this Friday to decide whether they confirmed or revoked their decision. However, the judge of the Supreme Court Gilmar Mendes, suspended the virtual trial on the case when the vote was with four votes against Collor. The final decision of the Plenary, requested by Moraes, does not alter, however, the request for prison that is already in execution.
Collor was put in custody at the headquarters of the Federal Police of Maceió, waiting for the decision of the Court and the orientations about how its transfer to the Brazilian capital will be. Due to the health problems suffered by the former president -Parkinson, bipolar disorder and sleep apnea-, his defense asked Judge Moraes to fulfill the penalty low house arrest.
For now Moraes has attended the law of the lawyers so that Collor fulfills his penalty in the city of Macéio, where he resides, and has given 24 hours to the direction of The Cavalcanti de Oliveira Baldomero prisonto inform if you can address the health problems of the former president. Collor was already transferred to that detention center in a special and individual cell. The petition for house arrest is being analyzed.
Third exmandatary arrested
Collor was the 32nd president of Brazil, and is the third Brazilian former president arrested since the redemocratization of the country, in 1985. Before Collor, the current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was imprisoned between April 2018 and November 2019, also condemned for charges related to the Lavacoches operation of which he has been acquitted for lack of evidence.
President Michel Temer, who replaced Dilma Rousseff After his dismissal in 2016, he was arrested for a week in pretrial detention in March 2019 in a investigation of money laundering and manipulation of tenders linked to the construction of the Nuclear Power Plant of Angra 3, in Rio de Janeiro. Currently, former president Jair Bolsonaro has been denounced for an attempted attempted against his successor, Lula da Silva, and also runs the risk of being arrested.
The former Mello’s president, heir to a traditional family of politicians in northern Brazil, has had his career marked by corruption and the disappointment that his government meantreceived as a promise of modernization of the country.
One of the youngest presidents in Brazilian history, Collor assumed the presidency at age 41 and was held as a political revelation in a young democracy, but corruption scandals led him to resign when the Senate approved his process of dismissal.
Deviled, Collor returned to politics between 2007 and 2023 as a senator and is currently free of charge after losing in 2022 the election for governor of the state of Aagoas. Currently Collor is prohibited from exercising public office for 17 years, a period equivalent to twice his sentence.
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