Former leaders have been jailed or charged all over the world
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Former President Trump declared himself a "very innocent man" on Thursday and said the U.S. has "has gone to hell" after becoming the first American president to be convicted of a felony.
The big picture: Trump joins a long list of leaders across at least 78 countries who, since 2000, have left office and been jailed or prosecuted — including in democracies like France, Israel and South Korea.
- Since 1980, around half of the world's countries have had at least one such case, and that's not counting impeachments or coups.
Driving the news: A jury in New York found Trump guilty on all 34 counts related to falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
- Trump is expected to appeal the verdict but the process is unlikely to wrap before election day.
- The conviction has enraged many Republicans and ignited a fundraising push for Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
- "There is now only one issue in this election: whether the American people will stand for the USA becoming a Banana Republic," tweeted tech investor David Sacks.
The big picture: Investigations into former leaders have made waves around the world.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial fueled some of the outrage over his judicial overhaul plan last year, while Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency in 2023 after his corruption conviction was thrown out.
- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's home was surrounded last year in a botched attempt to arrest him, while former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak remains in jail after a judge threw out a challenge to his corruption conviction in the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scheme.
- Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina's former vice president and president, was convicted of fraud in 2022 but remained in office through 2023.
Several ex-leaders from wealthy democracies have also found themselves on trial in the past two decades.
- Like Trump, Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy had his home searched after leaving office. He was convicted in two separate cases in 2021 and sentenced to prison (he's appealing).
- In South Korea, former President Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years for corruption. She was pardoned by her successor in December 2021 after serving five.
- In Taiwan, former President Chen Shui-bian was convicted of bribery in 2009.
Lula isn't the only former leader for whom a trial or even conviction was not career-ending.
- Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been in and out of court for three decades and was temporarily barred from seeking office due to a tax fraud conviction, but remains a player in Italian politics at 86.
For obvious reasons, the countries that are least likely to be filled in on our map are monarchies or dictatorships where leaders are long-serving and untouchable.
- In some countries, leaders may be inclined to cling to power due to the risk of prison if they don't. That's one explanation for the trend of African leaders seeking third terms.
- But the region where the most countries have jailed or prosecuted former leaders over the last two decades is Latin America. In Peru, every president but one who served between 1985 and 2018 has been arrested or charged.
- Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is under investigation for alleged corruption but has not been charged.
In the vast majority of cases all over the world, the charges former leaders have faced relate to corruption.
Worth noting:
- Because we were looking at cases where leaders were jailed or prosecuted after leaving office, we didn't include impeachments and didn't automatically include coups — though cases where leaders were detained following coups are in the "complicated" category.
- We did include cases where ex-leaders were prosecuted in absentia or faced charges that were later dropped. We didn't include cases where leaders left office before 2000 but were charged more recently (Chile's Augusto Pinochet, for example). We didn't include cases where the charges came solely from international courts (thus, no Vladimir Putin).
- In the vast majority of these cases, the ex-leader was prosecuted or jailed for their activities in office, rather than before or after.
- We were only considering leaders who held the most powerful political office in each country, though that required judgment calls in a few cases.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with new details after the former President Trump's conviction in New York.
