Brazilian lawmaker sentenced to prison for corruption

Brasilia, Sep 29 (IANS/EFE) Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court sentenced lawmaker Jose Fuscaldi Cesilio to seven years behind bars in the first prison sentenced meted out to a congressman in the 25-year history of the country’s democracy.

The justices of the Supreme Court found Cesilio guilty for acts of improper appropriation of funds and tax evasion committed prior to his service in Congress.

In addition to serving prison time, the lawmaker will lose his elected post, will be banned from running in any public elections for any post for eight years and will have to pay a fine of 12,000 reais ($7,000), according to the congressional news service.

Prosecutors accused Cesilio of appropriating the Social Security contributions of employees of a firm he owned between January 1995 and August 2002 to the tune of some 259 million reais.

Cesilio has been a Brazilian Labor Party representative for the central state of Goias since 2006.

The lawmaker is now the third person to be convicted by Brazil’s highest court since the restoration of democracy in 1985 and the first who will have to actually serve any time in prison.

Different associations of judges and lawyers have criticised the impunity that surrounds all public offices in Brazil, a situation that is contributed to by the lack of court convictions despite recurrent cases of corruption.

The groups of civil rights defenders agreed this year to push for and approve in Congress a law drafted by popular initiative that vetoed the candidacies of politicians who have been convicted of any crime, although they will retain the right to appeal.

The Federal Supreme Court has confirmed the constitutionality of the law, but it is still weighing whether it should go into effect immediately.

–IANS/EFE