The former president who brought Brazil to prominence on the world stage has been found guilty of corruption and money laundering — a historic judgement underscoring that no one is out of reach of this Latin American country’s sprawling graft investigation.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s conviction on Wednesday was the highest-profile victory yet for the probe, which has already brought charges against dozens of political and business elite and recovered more than US$3 billion in ill-gotten gains.
While Judge Sergio Moro defended the decision as one based purely on the law, Lula derided the trial as a political witch hunt and is expected to rally his supporters to his cause with a news conference he called for yesterday.
Photo: AP
Brazil’s first working-class president, sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison, is to remain free while an appeal is heard, but he is now the country’s first former president to be convicted in a criminal proceeding, at least since democracy was restored in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Brazilian President Michel Temer is facing his own corruption charge.
“It’s very unusual to have a former president convicted of corruption and at the time same a sitting president also being investigated,” said Sergio Praca, a political scientist at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas university in Rio de Janeiro. “Today is a huge moment in Brazilian history, for better or worse.”
Brazilians have lived through three tumultuous years as the ever-spreading “Operation Car Wash” investigation has revealed corruption on a scale that has shocked even the most cynical. At the same time, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office for illegally managing the federal budget.
Now her successor, Temer, is under siege as the lower house of the Brazilian National Congress decides whether he should be suspended and put on trial.
The probe initially focused on members of Lula’s Workers’ Party, but it has since brought charges of wrongdoing against politicians of all stripes, feeding anger against those at the top as Brazil’s struggles with its worst economic slump in decades.
Brazilians are frequently in the streets, either to voice support for politicians they feel are being unfairly attacked or to back the prosecutors and judges who are investigating them.
Traditionally, no one has been better at drawing a crowd than Lula.
“He will try to mobilize his crowd, his group, but I don’t think he’s noticed that the times have changed, that the battle is not fought on the streets,” Praca said. “People are just plain tired of everything.”
A few hundred Lula supporters did on Wednesday night protest his conviction in Sao Paulo and a somewhat smaller group was also out to cheer Moro’s decision.
The charismatic leader left office at the end of 2010 with sky-high popularity, after riding an economic boom to fund social programs that pulled millions of Brazilians out of poverty and expanding the international role of Latin America’s biggest nation.
In many quarters, the man remains revered — both for his economic policies and his role in fighting for democracy during the country’s dictatorship. The 71-year-old has been considered a front-runner for next year’s presidential election.
Lula’s defense team issued a scathing statement after the verdict, calling the charges an attack on democracy and vowing to prove the former president’s innocence.
“President Lula has been the victim of lawfare, the use of the law for political ends, the famous method used to brutal effect in various dictatorships throughout history,” the lawyers said.
Lula was accused of receiving a beachfront apartment and repairs to the property as kickbacks from construction company OAS.
Lula never owned the apartment, but prosecutors argued it was intended for him.
Prosecutors also said that OAS paid to store Lula’s belongings, but Moro dismissed that part of the case.
Lula also faces charges in four other cases. He denies any wrongdoing.
Moro said that he did not order Lula’s immediate arrest because the conviction of a president is such a serious matter that he felt the former president’s appeal should be heard first.
The case now goes before a group of magistrates. If they uphold the conviction, Brazilian law stipulates that Lula would be barred from seeking office.
In addition to sentencing Lula to nine-and-a-half years in prison, Moro also ruled that the politician should be barred from public office for 19 years.
The prosecutor’s office that handled the case said it would appeal the sentence to ask for it to be increased.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese