Former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Photo / AP
Former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vowed to appeal after being convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison.
The ruling marked a stunning fall for Lula, one of the country's most popular politicians, and a serious blow to his chances of a political comeback.
The former union leader, who won global praise for policies to reduce stinging inequality in Brazil, faces four more corruption trials and will remain free on appeal. The verdict is the highest-profile conviction yet in a corruption investigation that has revealed a sprawling system of graft at the highest levels of Brazilian business and government.
Judge Sergio Moro found Lula, 71, guilty of accepting 3.7 million reais (US$1.1m) worth of bribes from engineering firm OAS SA. The landmark decision marks the first conviction of the former president. His lawyers have already said he is planning to appeal.
"No matter how important you are, no one is above the law," said Moro in his verdict. Moro is one of the main protagonists in Operation Car Wash, a massive corruption probe that has sent a number of the country's top politicians to jail. Lula's appeals process could take a year and a half. Lula was found guilty of charges that he accepted the use of a beach apartment - and free renovation on the home - from OAS SA as a kickback. Lula's defence says that the apartment belonged to the construction firm and that he only visited it once.
Lula won fame as a spokesman for Brazil's neglected poor. A co-founder of the Workers' Party, he led the country during an economic boom and introduced welfare policies that helped lift 36 million out of poverty. He left office with an approval rate of over 80 per cent.
Lula has been widely expected to run for another presidential term in the October 2018 election. Recent polls have shown him in the lead in the primaries ahead of the vote. If he were found guilty by the appeals court before the election, he would not be permitted to run for president.
"This makes Lula's situation much worse since it is much more than a mere investigation," said Claudio Couto, a political science professor at Fundacao Getulio Vargas, a Sao Paulo-based university and think-tank. "Until the appeal is decided, he will rally his allies and supporters against a decision that is controversial." David Fleischer, professor emeritus at the University of Brasilia, said: "Lula is on his way to ineligibility. It changes the whole political spectrum if he can't run."
A few hundred supporters gathered in Sao Paulo to denounce the ruling. A smaller group rallied to support it. "It was an obviously political decision to prevent Lula from becoming president," said Armando Teixeira, an unemployed auto worker. "Everyone knows he will win if he runs."
Launched in March 2014, the "Operation Car Wash" probe began as an investigation into money laundering led by police and prosecutors of Parana. It started near Brazil's Congress when service station owner and black-money dealer Carlos Habib Chater was arrested. Investigators discovered Chater was doing business with convicted money launderer Alberto Youssef, who had bought a Range Rover for Paulo Roberto Costa, a former executive at Petrobras, the state oil company. Yousseff and Costa reached plea bargains that revealed an immense graft scheme.
Prosecutors say executives of major construction companies such as Odebrecht, OAS and Andrade Gutierrez effectively formed a cartel that decided which firms would be awarded Petrobras contracts. Money was used to pay off dozens of politicians and Petrobras executives, investigators say.
The dozens of top businessmen and politicians who have already been convicted or are being investigated is a who's who of Brazil's elite. Among them are former Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht and ex-Chamber of Deputies Speaker Eduardo Cunha, both of whom are serving long prison sentences.
Joesley Batista, chairman of meat-packing company JBS, was being investigated for allegedly bribing Cunha. During a meeting with President Michel Temer, Batista told Temer about the bribing and Temer told him to keep it up, according to a recording. Temer has also been accused in plea bargains by Odebrecht executives of taking bribes and illegal campaign financing.
Graft has long been part of doing business in Brazil. This time it is different: a young and crusading group of prosecutors and judges, plea bargains that have helped investigators uncover white-collar crimes normally hard to prove and the practice of keeping defendants in jail while they await trial.
- AAP, Washington Post, AP, Bloomberg