RIO DE JANEIRO — Two years after he was impeached by Congress and left office in disgrace, former Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello was cleared by the Supreme Court on Monday of corruption charges in a case the court called weak and pocked with errors.
The panel of eight judges ruled 5-3 that Atty. Gen. Aristides Junqueira failed to show proof that Collor and his former campaign treasurer, Paulo Cesar Farias, used their power to get kickbacks from business leaders and politicians seeking official favors.
The verdict came after a three-day trial--which none of the defendants attended--in Brasilia, the nation's capital.
Collor, Farias and seven others were charged with "passive corruption," which in Brazilian law means receipt of illicit gains or "undue" advantages while in public office. A guilty verdict could have brought Collor up to eight years in prison.
Collor's attorney, Evaristo de Moraes, hailed the judges' finding as a "double victory for democracy." The case, he said, showed not only that "a president can be brought to the defendant's chair" but also that he can receive a fair trial.
But the ruling was a bitter one for those who poured into the streets two years ago to demand Collor's ouster and lobby for a cleanup of Brazilian politics. "This is one of the greatest political, judicial and ethical absurdities this country has ever seen," said Herbert de Souza, a sociologist whose Movement for Ethics in Politics led street protests against Collor.
At the trial, Junqueira argued that Collor and Farias had solicited bribes from business leaders and then laundered the money through "ghost" companies and bank accounts.
He charged that Farias, acting on Collor's behalf, pocketed $295,000 from a construction magnate as a pay-back for having him named secretary of transportation, and that Farias used his influence to win an illegal $1.1-million campaign contribution from Mercedes-Benz for a candidate friendly to Collor. Junqueira also said Farias invoked Collor's name to pressure the state oil company, Petrobras, into granting a loan on unusually favorable terms to an airline company, Vasp, owned by a close friend and former business partner.
However, the judges argued that in these and other cases the prosecution either failed to document its claims or backed them with inadmissible evidence, such as computer files seized illegally from Farias' home and tape recordings discarded as hearsay.
