Brazil’s former president, Fernando Collor de Mello was arrested on Friday and taken to prison to begin serving a nearly nine-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.
This marks another dramatic fall from grace among the country's political elite.
Collor de Mello, who became Brazil’s first democratically elected president after a decades-long military dictatorship, resigned in 1992 amid an impeachment process over allegations of bribery.
Now, over 30 years later, he faces imprisonment over separate corruption charges tied to the massive “Car Wash” scandal.
The 75-year-old was detained in the northeastern city of Maceió, where he had previously served as both governor and senator, a federal police source confirmed to reporters. He is being held in an individual cell in a special wing of the Baldomero Cavalcanti de Oliveira prison.
In 2023, Collor de Mello was convicted of accepting 20 million reais (approximately $3.5 million) in bribes between 2010 and 2014.
Prosecutors said he used his position as a senator to irregularly facilitate contracts between a construction company and BR Distribuidora, a former subsidiary of state oil giant Petrobras.
On Thursday, Brazil’s top court rejected Collor de Mello’s last-minute attempt to annul his arrest warrant. His lawyers said he was preparing to travel to the capital, BrasÃlia, to surrender voluntarily when police arrived and arrested him before dawn.
Collor de Mello joins a growing list of Brazilian leaders who have faced serious legal consequences. Since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, four of the seven presidents who have led the country have been impeached, convicted, or jailed.
Most recently, former president Jair Bolsonaro was ordered to stand trial over allegations he plotted a coup following his 2022 election loss.
Meanwhile, current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who served two previous terms and returned to office in 2023, was himself jailed for corruption during the “Car Wash”; investigation, although his conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
The “Car Wash” probe exposed a vast web of political corruption, revealing that major construction firms paid billions in bribes to secure public contracts across Latin America.
Collor de Mello rose to fame in the late 1980s as a youthful, reformist outsider, defeating Lula in the landmark 1989 presidential election. His campaign promised sweeping political and economic change, energizing a nation eager for renewal after years of dictatorship.
However, his presidency quickly unraveled. Amid mounting allegations of corruption, Congress launched impeachment proceedings, leading to his resignation in 1992 before the process could be completed.
After a period of political ineligibility, Collor de Mello staged a comeback, winning election to the Senate for Alagoas in 2006, a position he held until 2022. In his later political career, he aligned himself with right-wing figures, campaigning for Bolsonaro’s failed re-election bid in 2022 — only to see his old rival, Lula, reclaim the presidency.
