One of three judges at a Brazilian appeal court judge voted to uphold Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's corruption conviction Wednesday, dealing a severe blow to the ex-president's comback hopes. Judge Joao Gebran Neto said in a three-hour judgement that Lula was one of the architects "of a sophisticated scheme of fraud and corruption" that had weakened Brazil's entire political system.
He voted to increase Lula's sentence from 9.5 years to more than 12 years. The other two judges were to present their judgements later Wednesday. The court had convened amid high security in the tense southern city of Porto Alegre to rule on an appeal by the hugely popular leftist icon against his July corruption conviction in Brazil's sprawling "Car Wash" graft scandal.
The stakes are high, and thousands of Lula supporters and opponents gathered in the city to await the ruling. Confirmation of the sentence would effectively end Lula's hopes of running in this year's presidential election, which he is favored to win.
Lula was not in court. Instead he was hundreds of kilometers (miles) away near Sao Paolo, addressing former colleagues in the powerful metalworkers' union he once led. "I am extremely calm, with the awareness that I have committed no crime," he told union members. Lula is accused of being gifted a three-floor seaside apartment from Brazil's OAS construction group in exchange for public contracts from state-controlled oil company Petrobras during his 2003-2010 presidency.
Defense lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins had told the court it was clear OAS owned the apartment, and that Lula "never got the keys and never spent a night there." But in his judgement, Gebran Neto said there was evidence "that the triplex apartment, from the beginning, even before the OAS took over the works, was reserved for President Lula."
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