Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil's first head of state elected by direct universal suffrage after the military dictatorship, was sentenced Wednesday to eight years and ten months in prison by the Supreme Court. He is accused of having received 20 million reais (about 3.8 million euros) in bribes from 2010 to 2014, when he was a senator.
The investigation was opened in the context of the "Express Wash" scandal, which shook the entire Brazilian political spectrum from 2014. At the end of his second eight-year term in the upper house, Fernando Collorde Mello openly supported far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.