15 Facts About Paulo Maluf

Paulo Maluf's career has been plagued with substantial allegations of corruption, although he was only convicted by Brazilian Courts in 2017.

Paulo Maluf spent a few months in jail and is under house arrest due to his poor health and advanced age.

Paulo Maluf is the president of the local branch, in the state of Sao Paulo, of the right-wing Progressive Party of Brazil, heir to the old National Renewal Alliance.

Interpol has issued a Red Notice to arrest Paulo Maluf, extradite him and try him in the United States on charges of conspiracy and criminal possession.

Paulo Salim Maluf, the son of Lebanese Christian immigrants Salim Farah Maluf and Maria Stephan Maluf, was born in Sao Paulo, and graduated 1954 in engineering at the University of Sao Paulo, where coincidentally he was a colleague of the late Mario Covas, another important Brazilian politician who would later become one of his biggest political rivals.

At the time a self-acknowledged playboy with a taste for fast-racing sportscars, Paulo Maluf entered professional politics thanks to his family's friendship with the then military president Artur da Costa e Silva, with whom he shared a common interest in Horse racing bets.

Paulo Maluf spent wildly in public works, including in some schemes of doubtful validity, such as in an eventually failed plan to move the state's capital city.

Such high rates of local approval stand as a reflection of the fact that Paulo Maluf was able to forge himself a successful career in post-dictatorship Brazil, despite his perennial reputation for shady deals and for an unsavory personality pointing directly to his former connections to the authoritarian regime.

However, one of the consequences of Pitta's disastrous administration in Sao Paulo, was that it left the Sao Paulo municipality mired in debt, as such drawing attention to Maluf's and his former protege's management practices: in the words of a Brazilian professor at the end of Pitta's term, "Sao Paulo's corruption has been transformed into a public horror from the whispered-about horror it always was".

One notable example of the allegations of corruption that surfaced around Paulo Maluf was the Ayrton Senna tunnel, which passes underneath Ibirapuera Park and cost more, per kilometer, than the Channel Tunnel.

Paulo Maluf was part of an extensive investigation, by a Parliamentary Inquiry Committee set up in 2003, regarding money laundering involving bank accounts held by him and his family in Jersey.

Paulo Maluf has been convicted of corruption multiple times, but only in 2001 was the sentence final, with no possibility of appeal.

Paulo Maluf was reelected again in 2010, with something around 497,000 ballots cast for him.

On 20 December 2017, after being convicted of corruption by the Supreme Court of Brazil and after a few attempts to challenge that conviction by means of internal appeals within the Supreme Court, Paulo Maluf surrendered to Brazilian police, to begin his prison sentence as ordered.

Paulo Maluf currently remains under house arrest and, as ordered by the Brazilian Supreme Court, in August 2018 the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil officially declared that, as a result of his conviction, Maluf lost his Federal Deputy seat.