Brazil’s top court sentences ex-President Collor to prison for corruption

BRASILIA (Reuters) – 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 30 million reais ($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, liberalizing 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 privatize 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 defense lawyers said Collor did “not commit any crime” and expressed confidence that he would ultimately be exonerated.

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