Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, once the most popular president in Brazil’s recent history, has been sentenced to nine years and six months in prison after being found guilty on corruption and money-laundering charges.

Although Lula, as he is universally known, will remain free pending an appeal – and his supporters denounced the sentence as political persecution – the ruling marks an extraordinary fall for a leader Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on earth”.


Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history?
Read more
Lula won two mandates as Brazil’s first president from the leftist Workers’ party and helped his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, win two subsequent elections before she was impeached last year for breaking budget rules amid a sprawling corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras.

Passing sentence on the former president, Judge Sergio Moro said Lula took part in the corruption scheme, in which billions of dollars were paid to middlemen, executives and politicians for fat contracts.

Lula still faces four more trials, in a process defence lawyers say constitutes a judicial blitzkrieg designed to prevent him returning to politics.

“Symbolically [the sentence] has a very heavy weight, not just for him but for the country, that voted not just twice for him but twice for the candidate he indicated,” said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Insper, a business school in São Paulo.

Born into barefoot poverty in Brazil’s arid north-east, Lula ran the powerful metal workers’ union before helping found the Workers’ party with fellow leftists, unionists and intellectuals in 1980. He fought and lost three elections before winning the first of two mandates in 2002. Thanks to transformative social policies and a booming economy, tens of millions of Brazilians escaped poverty during his rule.

Advertisement

No other Brazilian politician in recent decades has been able to capture popular imagination with such verve. Although his reputation has been tarnished in recent years, he currently leads polling for the 2018 election.

If his conviction is upheld by a higher court, however, he will be ineligible to stand.

“He will dramatize this process, of course, he will say this is a process to stop him being a candidate. The condemnation will enter the political game,” Melo said. “The Workers’ party will exploit this politically and say Lula is a victim.”

Wednesday’s sentence was related to accusations that Lula benefited from about £590,000 in bribes from a construction company called OAS, which the prosecution alleged was paid in the shape of a seaside duplex apartment, renovated at Lula’s request.

In his ruling, Moro said that Lula had bought a simpler apartment in the same building worth about £53,000, and the company had upgraded him.

Prosecutors said the payment was part of around £21m that OAS paid in bribes to Lula’s Workers’ party in return for lucrative contracts as part of two oil refineries that Petrobras was building, Moro wrote in his sentence.

“The responsibility of a president of the republic is enormous, and, consequently, so is his guilt when he practises crimes,” Moro wrote.


'There is no crime': Brazil's ex-president keeps faith in party and justice system
Read more
During his trial in May, Lula gave five hours of testimony in which he angrily proclaimed his innocence and denied ever owning the apartment. His lawyers, Cristiano Martins and Valeska Martins, attacked the sentence in a statement.

“President Lula is innocent. For over three years, Lula has been subject to a politically motivated investigation. No credible evidence of guilt has been produced, and overwhelming proof of his innocence blatantly ignored,” they said. “We will prove Lula’s innocence in all unbiased courts including the United Nations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/brazil-president-lula-convicted-corruption

That's a serious nation that knows the value of passing a strong message with justice.
In Nigeria you can't sentence even the President of tomato sellers' association to jail.

And over here, treasury looters are termed "Elder Statemen" or are given a fine to pay after being found guilty with evidence sef

Can this ever happen in Nigeria?
If so, Kuje would have been the destination of all our presidents once they step down.

Brazil has always been corrupt but this action shows they are serious about eradicating/reducing corruption. When will Nigeria convict an ex preisident?

i Trust my country, if this happen in nigeria, his tribe or pple will be shouting for war

And in this animal kingdom of ours a mere "wife of former president " is boldly writing the Speaker of House of Reps to stop the constituted Authority from investigating her for corruption offense she most likely is guilty of

In Nigerian politician's voice the president na mumu

People who steal goats, chickens #1000. Are the ones in prison over here.

Bukola Saraki should be the 1 among the people to be guillotined.
Remembering the French Revolution. Even Obasanjo will be gone by now.

So Lula has learnt how to cry "political witch-hunting" like his Nigerian counterparts? Well,no problem. He now has a chance to be president of the guys in his prison cell. #ExecutivePresidentToExecutivePrisoner

Doubt he'll do even a third of it, if he even ends up going at all but it's a step in the right direction

Desyner:
That's a serious nation that knows the value of passing a strong message with justice.
In Nigeria you can't sentence even the President of tomato sellers' association to jail.