Brazil ex-president Collor to be released on house arrest

Brazil’s Fernando Collor de Mello. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Elderly former Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello, who was jailed last week for corruption, will be allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest for “humanitarian” reasons, a judge said Thursday.

Brazil’s first democratically-elected president after a decades-long dictatorship last week began serving a nine-year sentence for taking bribes while a senator between 2010 and 2014.

The 75-year-old, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, was convicted of taking 20 million reais ($3.5 million) in bribes to arrange contracts between a construction company and a former subsidiary of Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras.

Mr Collor was jailed in a prison in the northeastern city of Maceio, where he has a residence.

His lawyers had asked that he be allowed serve his sentence at home.

Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered him to prison, agreed to the request, citing Collor’s “serious health situation…his age and the necessity of special treatment.”

Mr. Collor will have to hand in his passport and wear an electronic ankle bracelet, Moraes added.

Mr. Collor resigned as president in 1992, after less than three years in power, to avoid being impeached by parliament for corruption.

He is not the first former Brazilian leader to fall foul of the law.

Far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to stand trial over an alleged coup plot after losing elections in 2022.

And left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who served two terms between 2003 and 2010, spent a year-and-a-half behind bars for bribe-taking and money laundering before having his conviction annulled and winning a third term in October 2022.