- Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled that ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva must start his jail pending his appeal
- The ex-president was accused of corruption in an investigation tagged ‘Operation Car Wash’ and was eventually convicted
- He is facing a 12-year jail term if his appeal fails
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled that the country’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who served as president between 2003 and 2011, will be sent to jail while he appeals against a corruption conviction.
Lula is facing 12 years in jail on charges of accepting a bribe but had asked to remain free during his appeal, BBC reports.
NAIJ.com gathered that the ex-president was implicated in a corruption investigation case tagged ‘Operation Car Wash’.
The prosecution reportedly started in 2014 after Lula left office, following allegations that executives at the state oil company Petrobras had accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to construction firms.
The investigation allegedly uncovered a huge web of corruption involving top-level politicians from a broad spectrum of parties taking kickbacks.
The ex-president himself was convicted of receiving a renovated beachfront apartment worth some 3.7 million reais ($1.1m, £790,000), as a bribe by engineering firm OAS.
However, Lula claimed the charges were politically motivated, and designed to prevent him from running for president in October.
He described the battle against his conviction and prison term as a continuation of his fight against Brazil's military rule, which came to an end in 1985.
"I did not accept the military dictatorship and I will not accept this dictatorship of the prosecutors," he told a gathering of supporters on Monday, April 2.
According to Lula's political party, Workers' Party, the ruling was a "tragic day for democracy and Brazil".
Meanwhile, the judge in charge of Operation Car Wash, Sergio Moro, is expected to issue a warrant for Lula's arrest within days.
This, however, does not necessarily mean that Lula will go to jail for 12 years.
According to the BBC report, he has not exhausted his appeals yet. There are two higher courts which he can still turn to, the Superior Court and the Supreme Court.
The two courts will not re-examine whether Lula was guilty of corruption. They would look into whether legal procedures were followed correctly and whether his constitutional rights were breached.
Nonetheless, this process could take months or even years. If either court were to rule in Lula's favour, his conviction could be annulled and he would be released.
The latest ruling from the Supreme Court is a reportedly break away from the country’s legal tradition.
BBC reports that until recently, defendants in Brazil were allowed to remain free until their final appeal had been exhausted.
However, the Supreme Court opted to consider in Lula’s case, a 2016 ruling from a lower court, under which defendants could be sent to jail after a failed first appeal.
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Lula lost his first appeal in January when the appeals court not only upheld his conviction but increased the sentence from nine and a half years to 12.
Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had previously reported that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody as part of an investigation that he received millions of euros in illegal financing from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press that Sarkozy was being held at the police at the Nanterre police station, west of Paris.
Sarkozy and his former chief of staff have denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign.
The EFCC stage a walk against corruption - on NAIJ.com TV
Source: Naija.ng