Collor, 75, held by federal police in the northeastern city of Maceio, capital of Alagoas state, lawyer says.
Brazil’s former President Fernando Collor de Mello has been arrested after a Supreme Court justice rejected his challenges against a previous conviction and ordered him to start serving jail time.
Collor’s lawyer, Marcelo Bessa, said the former leader was arrested at 4am (07:00 GMT) on Friday while travelling to Brazil’s capital Brasilia, where he planned to turn himself in after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ arrest order.
The 75-year-old politician was being held by federal police in the northeastern city of Maceio, the capital of Alagoas state, Bessa said in a statement.
Moraes’ order on Thursday came after the top court sentenced Collor, the first president to win the popular vote after the end of Brazil’s last military dictatorship in 1985, to eight years and 10 months in prison in 2023 on corruption and money-laundering charges.
Collor’s lawyer had already voiced “surprise and concern” at Moraes’ decision in an initial statement released late on Thursday, but added that the former president would comply with the order.
The 2023 conviction came after Brazilian prosecutors accused Collor of receiving about 30 million reais ($5.28m) in bribes from a then subsidiary of state-run oil company Petrobras.
Collor took office as president in 1990, but did not finish his term as Congress decided to impeach him two years later amid a separate corruption scandal for which the Supreme Court acquitted him in 1994.
He was later elected as a senator representing the state of Alagoas.
He left Congress in early 2023 following an unsuccessful bid for governor of Alagoas.
Collor de Mello is not Brazil’s first president to run afoul of the law.
Four of the seven presidents who have led the country since the 1964-1985 military dictatorship have either been convicted, jailed or impeached.
In the latest case, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro has been ordered to stand trial over an alleged coup plot after losing the 2022 election.
