Brazil ex-president Collor de Mello jailed for corruption
Collor de Mello, Brazil's first democratically elected president after a decades-long dictatorship, resigned in 1992 after congress launched impeachment proceedings against him for allegedly taking bribes.
His arrest stems from a conviction over bribes taken two decades later while a senator, part of the sprawling "Car Wash" corruption scandal.
The 75-year-old was detained in Maceio city in northeastern Alagoas state, where he served as a senator and governor, a federal police source told AFP.
In 2023, Collor de Mello was found guilty of having received 20 million reais ($3.5 million dollars) in bribes while a senator between 2010 and 2014 to "irregularly facilitate contracts" between a construction company and a former subsidiary of Brazil's state oil company Petrobras.
On Thursday, a top court rejected his efforts to have the arrest order annulled.
His lawyers told local media that he was arrested before dawn as he was about to travel to the capital Brasilia to hand himself in.
He was incarcerated in an individual cell in a special wing of Baldomero Baldomero Cavalcanti de Oliveira prison in Maceio.
Collor de Mello is not Brazil's first president to fall foul of the law.
Four of the seven presidents who have led the country since the 1964-1985 military dictatorship have either been convicted, jailed or impeached.
In the latest case, far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to stand trial over an alleged coup plot after losing the 2022 election.
'Car Wash' fallout
Current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who served two terms between 2003 and 2010, was among dozens of top businessmen and politicians in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America who were caught up in the tentacular Car Wash mega-probe.
The investigation uncovered a vast network of bribes paid by large construction companies to politicians in several countries to obtain major public works contracts.
Lula spent a year and a half behind bars before having his conviction overturned by the Supreme Court and winning a third term in October 2022.
Collor de Mello was heralded as a youthful, non-conformist figure, who promised far-reaching political and social reforms when he beat the leftist Lula to the presidency in 1989.
But his day in the sun did not last long.
Less than three years later he stood down as president as the impeachment process was nearly complete.
He returned to politics, after a period of ineligibility had expired, and in 2006 was elected senator for Alagoas, a seat he held until 2022.
In 2022, he campaigned for Bolsonaro who was seeking re-election but it was Collor de Mello's old adversary Lula who triumphed.
© 2025 AFP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
28 minutes ago
- France 24
'Redo the election': Brazil's ex-president Bolsonaro appears in court on attempted coup charges
Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro helped draft a plan to "redo the election" he narrowly lost in 2022, a co-accused testified in the former president's coup trial on Monday. Prosecutors accused the 70-year-old far-right leader, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022, of having led a "criminal organisation" plotting to prevent leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva taking power. The plot failed, the charge sheet says, for a lack of military backing. Bolsonaro and six co-accused appeared in the Supreme Court on Monday to undergo questioning. A seventh took part via videoconference from prison. Former right-hand man Mauro Cid, who has turned state's witness, told the court that Bolsonaro had "received and read" a draft decree for the declaration of a state of emergency. He then "edited" the document, which would have paved the way for measures to "redo the election" Lula had narrowly won, and also envisaged the imprisonment of officials. Apart from the alleged coup plot, Bolsonaro also stands accused of having been aware of plans to assassinate Lula, his vice president Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes – an arch-foe. Bolsonaro, who is hoping to make a comeback in 2026 presidential elections despite being barred from running, denies all charges. He and his former aides risk sentences of up to 40 years behind bars. Although he has the right to remain silent, the former president told reporters he plans to respond "without any problem" to questions from the court. "It's an excellent idea to speak openly about the coup. I will be very happy to have the opportunity to clarify what happened," the former army captain said last week. "It's the moment of truth." 'Dictator' The Supreme Court headquarters in Brasilia, where Bolsonaro will take the stand – likely Tuesday or Wednesday – was one of the targets of rioting supporters known as "Bolsonaristas" – who raided government buildings in January 2023 as they urged the military to oust Lula. Bolsonaro was abroad at the time of the last-gasp effort to keep him in power, after the alleged coup planning fizzled. For the former president, the trial marked a reunion with former allies and sworn enemies including Cid, who has been labeled a traitor for testifying against his former boss. His testimony had allowed police to identify various actors in the alleged coup plot and to lay hands on compromising information, according to the investigation. Four former ministers and the former heads of Brazil's navy and intelligence agency will also be giving testimony in an in-person questioning session expected to run no later than Friday. The proceedings are broadcast live. Bolsonaro will face questions not only from prosecutors and defense attorneys, but also judge Moraes, whom the former president calls a "dictator". 'History' in the making Since the alleged plot was conceived over a long period, and because some of the charges are new to the Brazilian system, "an extremely complex legal discussion" is expected, according to Rogerio Taffarello, a criminal law expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. New witnesses may yet be called before the court gets to closing arguments and sentencing deliberations. Bolsonaro spent the weekend with his lawyers preparing his testimony at the residence of Sao Paulo state governor Tarcisio de Freitas, local media reported. In a preliminary phase, Freitas, who served as Bolsonaro's infrastructure minister, testified his boss had "never touched" on the subject of a coup or "mentioned any attempt at constitutional disruption". But two former army commanders said Bolsonaro had hosted a meeting where the declaration of a state of emergency was discussed as a means to overturn Lula's election victory. Bolsonaro's trial is the first for an attempted coup under a democratic regime in Brazil.
France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
Frederick Forsyth: adventurer and bestselling spy novelist
In such bestsellers as "The Day of the Jackal" and "The Odessa File", Forsyth honed a distinctive style of deeply researched and precise espionage thrillers involving power games between mercenaries, spies and scoundrels. For inspiration he drew on his own globe-trotting life, including an early stint as a foreign correspondent and assisting Britain's spy service on missions in Nigeria, South Africa, and the former East Germany and Rhodesia. "The research was the big parallel: as a foreign correspondent you are probing, asking questions, trying to find out what's going on, and probably being lied to," he told The Bookseller magazine in 2015. "Working on a novel is much the same... essentially it's a very extended report about something that never happened -- but might have." Dangerous research He wrote his first novel when he was 31, on a break from reporting and in dire need of money to fund his wanderlust. Having returned "from an African war, and stony broke as usual, with no job and no chance of one, I hit on the idea of writing a novel to clear my debts," he said in his autobiography "The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue" published in 2015. "There are several ways of making quick money, but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank." But Forsyth's foray came good. Taking just 35 days to pen "The Day of the Jackal", his story of a fictional assassination attempt on French president Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists, met immediate success when it appeared in 1971. The novel was later turned into a film and provided self-styled revolutionary Carlos the Jackal with his nickname. Forsyth went on to write a string of bestsellers including "The Odessa File" (1972) and "The Dogs of War" (1974). His eighteenth novel, "The Fox", was published in 2018. Forsyth's now classic post-Cold War thrillers drew on drone warfare, rendition and terrorism -- and eventually prompted his wife to call for an end to his dangerous research trips. "You're far too old, these places are bloody dangerous and you don't run as avidly, as nimbly as you used to," Sandy Molloy said after his last trip to Somalia in 2013 researching "The Kill List", as Forsyth recounted to AFP in 2016. Real-life spy There were also revelations in his autobiography about his links with British intelligence. Forsyth recounted that he was approached in 1968 by "Ronnie" from MI6 who wanted "an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave" in Nigeria, where there was a civil war between 1967 and 1970. While he was there, Forsyth reported on the situation and at the same time kept "Ronnie informed of things that could not, for various reasons, emerge in the media". Then in 1973 Forsyth was asked to conduct a mission for MI6 in communist East Germany. He drove his Triumph convertible to Dresden to receive a package from a Russian colonel in the toilets of the Albertinum museum. The writer claimed he was never paid by MI6 but in return received help with book research, submitting draft pages to ensure he was not divulging sensitive information. Flying dreams In later years Forsyth turned his attention to British politics, penning a regular column in the anti-EU Daily Express newspaper. He also wrote articles on counter-terrorism issues, military affairs and foreign policy. Despite his successful writing career, he admitted in his memoirs it was not his first choice. "As a boy, I was obsessed by aeroplanes and just wanted to be a pilot," he wrote of growing up an only child in Ashford, southern England, where he was born on August 25, 1938. He trained as a Royal Air Force pilot, before joining Reuters news agency in 1961 and later working for the BBC. But after he wrote "Jackal", another career path opened up.
France 24
7 hours ago
- France 24
'Break the siege': Tunisians launch 'symbolic' Gaza-bound mass land convoy
Hundreds of people, mainly Tunisians, launched on Monday a land convoy bound for Gaza, seeking to "break the siege" on the Palestinian territory, activists said. Organisers said the nine-bus convoy was not bringing aid into Gaza, but rather aimed at carrying out a "symbolic act" by breaking the blockade on the territory described by the United Nations as "the hungriest place on Earth". The "Soumoud" convoy, meaning "steadfastness" in Arabic, includes doctors and aims to arrive in Rafah, in southern Gaza, "by the end of the week", activist Jawaher Channa told AFP. It is set to pass through Libya and Egypt, although Cairo has yet to provide passage permits, she added. "We are about a thousand people, and we will have more join us along the way," said Channa, spokeswoman of the Tunisian Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine, the group organising the caravan. "Egypt has not yet given us permission to cross its borders, but we will see what happens when we get there," she said. Channa said the convoy was not set to face issues crossing Libya, "whose people have historically supported the Palestinian cause", despite recent deadly clashes in the country that remains divided between two governments. Algerian, Mauretanian, Moroccan and Libyan activists were also among the group, which is set to travel along the Tunisian and Libyan coasts, before continuing on to Rafah through Egypt. After 21 months of war, Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies. On June 1, the Madleen aid boat, boarded by activists including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and European parliament member Franco-Palestinian Rima Hassan, set sail for Gaza from Italy. 01:32 But on Monday morning Israel intercepted it, preventing it from reaching the Palestinian territory. The UN has warned that the Palestinian territory's entire population is at risk of famine.
