Bolsonaro and 3 more: half of Brazil’s post-dictatorship presidents were arrested

Recent decision against Bolsonaro has marked the fourth arrest of a former president of Brazil since 1985. On the other hand, only four others were not arrested. Recall the judicial sagas and decisions that motivated the arrests.

Jair Bolsonaro became the fourth former president of Brazil to be from redemocratization in 1985. House arrest was decreed by Judge Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court (STF), after the former president had violated precautionary measures imposed within the trial of the attempted coup.

In the last forty years, the former presidents Fernando Collor de Mello, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Before being reelected for a third term) and Michel Temer They were also arrested, in different circumstances and for different reasons. Of these, only Collor is currently a sentence. Since May, it has been under house arrest.

On the other hand, there are four former presidents who have not been arrested since the end of the military dictatorship: Dilma Rousseff, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Itamar Franco e José Sarney.

Dilma was arrested and tortured by the dictatorship in the 1970s. The workers’ leader was amnesty in May this year by unanimous decision of the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship.

Let us remember the judicial sagas faced by the former heads of state and the reasons for their arrests.

Jair Bolsonaro, in 2025

One of the main defendants in the trial of the 2022-2023 coup attempt, the former president was arrested this week after violating precautionary measures by spreading messages on allied social networking profiles last Sunday. The use of social networks and the transmission of audios or videos had been prohibited, even through third parties.

One day before being arrested, Bolsonaro, who led the executive between 2019 and 2022, gave a brief speech to supporters gathered at a Bolsonarist act in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, through a telephone call with his son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. He also participated in a video with federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira in São Paulo.

Other messages related to the former president were published throughout Sunday in the profiles of Carlos and Eduardo Bolsonaro, also their children and parliamentarians. Bolsonarist demonstrations took place in various capitals that day.

According to Moraes, the publications contained “clear content of incentive and incitement to attacks on the Federal Supreme Court and ostensible support for foreign intervention in the Brazilian Judiciary”.

In house arrest, Bolsonaro is now prevented from receiving visits, except for his lawyers or family members authorized by the Supreme Court. His mobile phone was seized by the Federal Police and is prohibited from accessing other devices.

The former president faces accusations that, added up, may result in a penalty of greater than 40 years in prison.

Fernando Collor de Mello, in 2023

President between 1990 and 1992, Collor was convicted by the STF in May 2023, in a lawsuit originated in Operation Lava Jato. According to the magistrates, the former president, later elected senator, had made political appointments For BR Distribuidora, then subsidiary of Petrobras, as leader of the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB).

It will have received 20 million reais in improper advantages in the company’s contracts, between 2010 and 2014. With the defense resources rejected, it was taken in April to a prison in Maceió, Alagoas, to comply with a Penalty of 8 years and 10 months in prison for passive corruption and laundering of capital.

However, six days later, in May, the Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, issued a favorable opinion to a request for house arrestpassing the former president to serve sentence at home. The defense claimed that 75 -year -old Collor suffers from Chronic Health Problemsincluding Parkinson’s disease, bipolar affective disturbance and sleep apnea. It is now with an electronic bracelet and can only receive visits from your lawyers.

Michel Temer, in 2019

In March 2019, Temer had the pre -trial detention decreed by order of federal judge Marcelo Bretas. The decision occurred in the context of Operation Decontamination, which was investigating Cartel crimes, active and passive corruption, laundering of capital and fraud in public tenders related to the construction of the Angra Nuclear Center 3.

He was released four days later and in May returned to prison for another six days. The release was decided by the Sixth Panel of the STJ, with the argument that there was no recent offense to justify the coercion measure.

Temer and Colonel João Baptista Lima, appointed as his financial operator, were accused of deviations in the construction of the energy production unitno value of 1.6 billion reaisresulting from different schemes.

The former president was accused of passive corruption, embezzlement e capital bleaching. There were 11 other defendants in the process.

The accusation that led to his arrest would be annulled by the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region in 2023.

Having held the presidency between May 2016 – after Dilma’s impeachment – and the end of 2018, Temer was the target of several inquiries. He was never condemned and therefore remains free.

Lula, in 2018

In a case that became a political and legal landmark in Brazil, the current president was arrested in April 2018 and remained 580 nights arrested at the Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba, until November 2019. At the time, as former president, he had been sentenced in the second instance to 12 years and a month in prison for corruption and laundering of capital, in the process of the Triplex apartment of the Solaris condominium (SP).

Lula was the first former Brazilian president to be arrested for a common crime. The first judgment was issued in July 2017 by then federal judge Sergio Moro, and would then be confirmed by the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF-4), which would still aggravate the penalty for 12 years and 1 month in prison.

The court considered that Lula had received UNDERSTANDING ADVANTAGE OF CONSTRUCTORA OASno value of 3.7 million reaisin the purchase and renovation of the property, and hid to be the real owner. The contractor would have carried out works in the apartment as a bribes, after the petista allegedly favored it in contracts with Petrobras.

After a year and seven months in prison, Lula was release After the Federal Supreme Court (STF) has revoked, by six votes against five, the possibility of starting the sentence before all appeals exhausted. At the date, he was still awaiting a decision of appeals in the STJ and the Supreme Court.

Two years later, in 2021, the Supreme Court would confirm the annulment of Lula’s convictions in the case of triplex and two others, arguing that they did not fit the Lava Jato operation and, therefore, were not the competence of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba (PR), which had condemned him in the first instance.

Twenty days later, the second class of the Supreme also decided that Moro had acted with partiality in Lula’s trialwhich is why the process should start over from scratch.

Thus, Lula was able to apply for in the 2022 elections, winning his third term, which began in January 2023. He had already held the presidency between 2003 and 2010.