Collor Believes He’ll Beat Impeachment and Return

Impeached President Fernando Collor de Mello believes he will win his scheduled trial by the Senate on corruption charges, proving his innocence and returning to the presidency, a friend of the president said Thursday.

Carlos Alberto Bejani told reporters that he asked Collor in a meeting Thursday if he would resign rather than submit to the Senate trial. “I’m staying until the end, and I’m going to win because I can prove my innocence,” Bejani quoted the president as saying.

Collor was charged with receiving millions of dollars in “phantom” checks, signed with false names, from accounts traced to businessman Paulo Augusto Farias. Farias, Collor’s presidential campaign treasurer in 1989, is accused of operating a multimillion-dollar graft and influence-peddling racket.

“I can prove that I don’t have anything to do with phantom checks,” Collor said, according to Bejani.

Bejani said Collor appeared extremely calm: “He seems like nothing has happened. Either he has very great mental control, or the impact has left him out of his mind.”

Bejani is mayor of Juiz de Fora and a political rival of Vice President Itamar Franco.

Franco will take over today--instead of Monday, as planned--from the disgraced Collor, the Senate said.

The announcement on Thursday by Sen. Dirceu Carneiro ended days of confusion over exactly when Franco would take over as acting president. Franco--a 61-year-old former mayor of Juiz de Fora and a former senator--will be sworn in as soon as the Senate notifies Collor that he will be suspended for 180 days while lawmakers decide whether to remove the president permanently.

Under Brazil’s constitution, the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides over Collor’s trial by the Senate.

Franco has been negotiating with political parties on Cabinet appointments while seeking the parties’ support for his administration. The parties have been bickering over who will hold the key post of finance minister.