Brazil’s supreme court voted on Wednesday to sentence former President Fernando Collor de Mello to 8 years and 10 months in prison on corruption and money laundering charges. The Brazilian prosecutor’s office accused Collor, 73, of having received around $6 million in bribes from a subsidiary of state-run oil company Petrobras.
The top court convicted the former senator in mid-May, but justices had still to decide on his sentence, which he can appeal. Collor was a dashing, liberalising politician who became Brazil’s first democratically elected president in 1989 after a two-decade military dictatorship, but he resigned three years later after the lower house of Congress impeached him.
A rakish, dynastic heir with a penchant for expensive sports cars, Collor was one of Brazil’s original free-marketeers who opposed Brazil’s entrenched protectionism and sought to privatise state-run firms in his curtailed presidency.
He continued in politics and later served 26 years as a conservative senator for the northeastern state of Alagoas, where his well-to-do family was from. He chaired the foreign relations committee He lost his seat in last year’s elections.
Collor himself could not immediately be reached for comment. In a note released by the time of his conviction, his defence lawyers said Collor did “not commit any crime” and expressed confidence that he would ultimately be exonerated.
Source: eNCA
In other news – A look at Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s most expensive house
Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid out $200 million in cash for one of the few residences that Domus Guest Edito Tadao Ando designed in the United States.
The house is definitely the most valued in California (although the two have managed to lower the price by 95 million), and is the second most expensive in the history of all the United States. Learn more
