Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has denied former President Fernando Collor de Mello’s appeals against his previous conviction and has ordered his immediate imprisonment, according to a court ruling released on Thursday.
This latest directive follows the 2023 decision by the Supreme Court, which sentenced Collor, Brazil’s first democratically elected president after the 1985 end of military rule, to eight years and ten months behind bars for corruption and money laundering.
Collor’s attorney, reacting to the court’s move, stated that the legal team received Moraes’ order with “surprise and concern,” though confirmed that the ex-president intends to comply with it.
Justice Moraes has called for a session with the full bench of the Supreme Court to determine whether his decision should be maintained or overturned.
The 2023 conviction stemmed from allegations by Brazil’s federal prosecutors that Collor accepted roughly 30 million reais (approximately $5.28 million) in bribes from a former subsidiary of the state-owned oil giant Petrobras.
Collor assumed the presidency in 1990 but was removed from office by Congress two years later due to a different corruption scandal.
Although he was later acquitted of those charges by the Supreme Court in 1994, he returned to politics and served as a senator.
