Collor, 75, held by federal police within the northeastern metropolis of Maceio, capital of Alagoas state, lawyer says.
Brazil’s former President Fernando Collor de Mello has been arrested after a Supreme Court docket justice rejected his challenges in opposition to a earlier conviction and ordered him to begin serving jail time.
Collor’s lawyer, Marcelo Bessa, stated the previous chief was arrested at 4am (07:00 GMT) on Friday whereas travelling to Brazil’s capital Brasilia, the place he deliberate to show himself in after Supreme Court docket Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ arrest order.
The 75-year-old politician was being held by federal police within the northeastern metropolis of Maceio, the capital of Alagoas state, Bessa stated in a press release.
Moraes’ order on Thursday got here after the highest courtroom sentenced Collor, the primary president to win the favored vote after the tip of Brazil’s final army dictatorship in 1985, to eight years and 10 months in jail in 2023 on corruption and money-laundering costs.
Collor’s lawyer had already voiced “shock and concern” at Moraes’ choice in an preliminary assertion launched late on Thursday, however added that the previous president would adjust to the order.
The 2023 conviction got here after Brazilian prosecutors accused Collor of receiving about 30 million reais ($5.28m) in bribes from a then subsidiary of state-run oil firm Petrobras.
Collor took workplace as president in 1990, however didn’t end his time period as Congress determined to question him two years later amid a separate corruption scandal for which the Supreme Court docket acquitted him in 1994.
He was later elected as a senator representing the state of Alagoas.
He left Congress in early 2023 following an unsuccessful bid for governor of Alagoas.
Collor de Mello isn’t Brazil’s first president to run afoul of the regulation.
4 of the seven presidents who’ve led the nation because the 1964-1985 army dictatorship have both been convicted, jailed or impeached.
Within the newest case, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to face trial over an alleged coup plot after dropping the 2022 election.
