Diego José Alba, PSDB pre-candidate for the Rio de Janeiro state assembly, was convicted by the Rio de Janeiro court in October 2009 for criminal conspiracy in a bank robbery attempt known as saidinha de banco.
The politician was arrested in the act in April 2009 along with three other men after tips that they planned to rob an Itaú branch in São Cristóvão. Judge Luciano Silva Barreto’s sentence noted that a gun with a filed-off serial number was seized from the vehicle used in the crime.
Alba served six months in preventive detention and then completed his sentence in open regime. He denied involvement, claiming he was at the branch to make a payment, but phone records linked him to one of the convicted men.
Besides the 2009 case, Alba was charged in 2015 for robbing a Caixa Econômica Federal branch and in 2016 for fraud in Minas Gerais. He was acquitted in the 2015 case for lack of evidence and the 2016 case remains ongoing.
