🔒 From president to prisoner

IN THIS ISSUE

• Former President Collor is now behind bars

• The new member of Lula’s cabinet 

• More friction between Congress and the Supreme Court

Supreme Court orders immediate arrest of ex-president Collor

Fernando Collor, Brazil’s first democratically elected president after the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) — and the first to be impeached (in 1992) — was arrested this morning after a Supreme Court justice ordered him to begin serving jail time for a previous corruption conviction.

• Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued the order for Collor’s arrest on Thursday. He was convicted of corruption and money laundering for accepting bribes to steer contracts at a subsidiary of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company.

Driving the news. Moraes rejected Collor’s latest appeal and requested a special remote session on Friday so that the full Supreme Court could uphold his ruling — but said Collor must be jailed regardless of the outcome. (At this stage, the former president’s appeal sought merely to reduce his sentence, rather than overturn the conviction.)

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