Fernando Collor de Mello, a former president of Brazil, was found guilty of corruption and money laundering on Wednesday and was given an 8-year, 10-month jail term.
Collor, 73, was charged by the Brazilian prosecutor’s office with accepting bribes worth around $6 million from a Petrobras subsidiary.
The former senator was found guilty by the highest court in mid-May, but judges had yet to decide on his punishment, which he might challenge.
After a two-decade military dictatorship, Collor, a handsome, liberalizing politician, was elected president of Brazil in 1989 and served for three years until being impeached by the lower house of Congress.
Collor was a brazen, aristocratic heir with a taste for pricey sports automobiles and one of Brazil’s first proponents of the free market who criticized
He continued in politics and later served 26 years as a conservative senator for the northeastern state of Alagoas, where his well-to-do family was from. He chaired the foreign relations committee He lost his seat in last year’s elections.
Collor himself could not immediately be reached for comment. In a note released by the time of his conviction, his defence lawyers said Collor did “not commit any crime” and expressed confidence that he would ultimately be exonerated.