Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison Wednesday on corruption and money-laundering charges.<\/p>\n
It is the first time since the establishment of the 1988 Constitution that a former president has been criminally convicted.<\/p>\n
The lead judge in the probe, Sergio Moro, said Lula, a leftist politician who ruled Brazil from 2003 – 2010, was free pending a possible appeal.<\/p>\n
Lula\u2019s conviction is the most important development of a wide-ranging multibillion-dollar corruption probe known as Operation Carwash that shed light on a scandal that involved some of the most important figures in Brazilian business and politics.<\/p>\n
The judgment concluded the first of five graft trials the former president faces.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege Lula and his allies overpriced contracts to engineering businesses and the state-owned energy giant Petrobras in return for illegal party funding and bribes.<\/p>\n
Lula and his wife were also alleged to have received a luxury apartment in exchange for public contracts from OAS, a privately-owned Brazilian multinational conglomerate, and Petrobras.<\/p>\n
The former president, one of the most popular in Brazil\u2019s history, has repeatedly denied the accusations, arguing they were part of a campaign to discredit him.<\/p>\n
In March 2016, Lula was arrested at his home and released after three hours of questioning. He was charged six months later with corruption and money-laundering.<\/p>\n
After two terms in office, Lula left the presidency in January 2011 with a record-high approval rating.<\/p>\n
His chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and removed from office last August for budget mishandling.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 10)<\/span>\n Anadolu Agency<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for corruption<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,34,101,14],"tags":[1035,2008],"class_list":["post-59116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-latin-america","category-politics","category-world","tag-brazil","tag-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}