Lula: ‘Brazil’s businessmen should pray I return as president’

Having lifted 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, Lula da Silva left office in 2011 after an eight-year term, with a nearly 90 percent approval rating.

Three years later, a criminal investigation estimated that more than $2bn had been largely embezzled through Brazil’s oil company Petrobras’ funds. It led to the imprisonment of several politicians, including Lula, who was released in 2019 after the Supreme Court ruled the process had been unlawful.

The former leader is now 75 and a free man. So, does he have ambitions to become Brazil’s president again? Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva talks to Al Jazeera.