Former Brazilian senator relocated to prison in São Paulo

Former Senator Luiz Estêvão de Oliveira Neto was relocated on Wednesday (Oct. 1st) from the Federal Police Superintendent's Office in São Paulo, where he had been kept in custody, to a state prison which remains undisclosed for security reasons.

On September 26, Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli ordered immediate applicability of the three-year, six-month sentence awarded against Neto in 2001, after he was found to use a forged document in an attempt to gain access to his assets that had been seized in another case against him.

Back in the 1990s, Neto was charged with bid rigging and overpricing of the construction project for the São Paulo Labor Court headquarters. Suspicions arose during compliance investigations into the project, when Neto was found to have links with the contractor in charge of the project. In 2006, he was sentenced to 31 years' imprisonment and fined, and his assets were seized. Since then, he has brought a series of appeals to delay beginning his sentence and the auctioning of his assets. In one of these appeals, he tried to use the forged document, and ended up incurring a new conviction.

Translated by Mayra Borges