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Brazil: prosecutors charge ex-President Lula with corruption over Petrobras scandal
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Brazilian prosecutors charged ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday with being the "boss" of a vast corruption scheme at state oil company Petrobras, in a major blow to the leftist hero's hopes of a political comeback.
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sexta-feira, 16 de setembro de 2016
#Brazil ex-president Lula charged as 'top boss' of Petrobras corruption s...
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Brazil ex-president Lula charged as 'top boss' of Petrobras corruption scheme
euronews (in English)
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Publicado em 14 de set de 2016
Prosecutors in Brazil have formally charged the country's ex-President Lula da Silva of being the 'top boss' in a giant kickback scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
"Today the Federal Public Prosecution accuses Mr Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of being the general in command of a vast corruption scheme identified as operation car wash,'' Public Prosecutor Deltan Dallagno said.
Investigators allege the scam at Petrobras amounted to the equivalent of more than 11 billion euros in loses, claimi…
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Comentários • 6
Adicionar um comentário público...
Plainglasswindows21 horas atrás
Who's not corrupt in Brazil?
Not Anymore1 dia atrás
huehuehuehuehuehue (?)
JUSTACHIPN1 dia atrás
Like I keep saying and saying ... LEFTIST ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY'S HANDS DOWN !!! Just wait till EVERYTHING comes out about the HildaBeast ... NOBODY in past or future will EVER beat HildaBeast on corruption !!!
==//==
Brazil ex-president Lula charged as 'top boss' of Petrobras corruption scheme
euronews (in English)
221.658
664 visualizações
Início em:
Publicado em 14 de set de 2016
Prosecutors in Brazil have formally charged the country's ex-President Lula da Silva of being the 'top boss' in a giant kickback scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
"Today the Federal Public Prosecution accuses Mr Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of being the general in command of a vast corruption scheme identified as operation car wash,'' Public Prosecutor Deltan Dallagno said.
Investigators allege the scam at Petrobras amounted to the equivalent of more than 11 billion euros in loses, claimi…
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2016/09/15/br...
What are the top stories today? Click to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
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Comentários • 6
Adicionar um comentário público...
Plainglasswindows20 horas atrás
Who's not corrupt in Brazil?
Not Anymore1 dia atrás
huehuehuehuehuehue (?)
JUSTACHIPN1 dia atrás
Like I keep saying and saying ... LEFTIST ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY'S HANDS DOWN !!! Just wait till EVERYTHING comes out about the HildaBeast ... NOBODY in past or future will EVER beat HildaBeast on corruption !!!
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Prosecutors in Brazil have formally charged the country’s ex-President Lula da Silva of being the ‘top boss’ in a giant kickback scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
“Today the Federal Public Prosecution accuses Mr Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of being the general in command of a vast corruption scheme identified as operation car wash,’‘ Public Prosecutor Deltan Dallagno said.
Investigators allege the scam at Petrobras amounted to the equivalent of more than 11 billion euros in loses, claiming political appointees and allies of the Lula’s leftist Workers Party approved overpriced contracts to engineering firms in return for illicit party funding.
They also say Brazil’s former president personally received nearly a million euros in bribes, including a luxury flat.
Lula and his wife, who was also charged, along with six others, deny any wrong-doing, but the scandal is widely seen as a major blow to the popular leader’s hopes of making a political comeback and running for the presidency in 2018.
It also marks a dramatic fall from grace for the leftist Worker’s Party that Lula founded, coming on top of last month’s impeachment of his successor as president, Dilma Rousseff.
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Edition: Français
Brésil : le parquet demande la mise en examen de Lula pour corruption See translation
Auto-Translated
Edition: Deutsch
Brasilien: Anklage gegen Expräsident Lula da Silva - wegen Korruption im großen Stil See translation
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Edition: Italiano
Scandalo Petrobras: Lula accusato di essere il collettore di gigantesco giro di mazzette See translation
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Edition: Español
La Fiscalía brasileña acusa a Lula de ser el "comandante máximo" de la corrupción en Petrobras See translation
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Edition: Português
Ministério Público brasileiro acusa formamente Lula da Silva de corrupção See translation
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Edition: Türkçe
Eski Brezilya Cumhurbaşkanı Lula'ya savcılardan yolsuzluk suçlaması See translation
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Edition: Українська
Екс-президента Бразилії офіційно звинуватили у керівництві корупційною схемою See translation
Auto-Translated
Edition: Pусский
Прокурор Бразилии: экс-президент Лула да Силва стоял во главе коррупционной схемы Petrobras See translation
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Edition: العربية
الادعاء العام الفيدرالي البرازيلي يتهم رسميا لُولاَ دَا سِيلْفَا بالفساد See translation
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Edition: فارسی
لولا دا سیلوا، رئیس جمهوری سابق برزیل رسما متهم شد See translation
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Edition: Ελληνικά
Βραζιλία: «Εγκέφαλος» του σκανδάλου Petrobras ο Λούλα ντα Σίλβα See translation
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Edition: Magyar
Brazília: a korábbi államfő lett a Petrobras-botrány fővádlottja See translation
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Brazil
Lula da Silva charged with corruption by Brazil prosecutors
Former president accused of being ‘commander-in-chief’ of kickback scheme at Petrobras
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Brazil’s corruption probe tightens its noose
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by: Samantha Pearson and Joe Leahy in São Paulo
Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been charged with corruption, with federal prosecutors accusing him of being the “commander-in-chief” of a kickback scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
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In a move set to heighten political tension in Latin America’s largest country and further weaken his once dominant Workers’ party, Mr Lula da Silva was on Wednesday accused of involvement in corruption and money laundering amounting to about R$91m ($27m) and holding on to power through a “bribocracy”.
“Lula not only knew about the corruption scheme, he was in command,” said Deltan Dallagnol, the prosecutor leading the investigation, known as Lava Jato (Car Wash), on Wednesday. He said he believed Mr Lula da Silva had continued to run the scheme after leaving the presidency in 2010.
Mr Lula da Silva’s lawyers vehemently denied the allegations, describing the prosecutors’ accusations as “blabber” without any proof.
The charges, the first laid by federal prosecutors against the former president, promise to further anger PT supporters and complicate efforts by President Michel Temer to implement reforms desperately needed to stabilise an economy suffering its deepest recession in decades.
The PT is furious over the impeachment last month of Dilma Rousseff, Mr Lula da Silva’s handpicked successor, for manipulating the budget and her replacement by Mr Temer, her former vice-president. The PT has been leading almost daily protests against the new government.
Prosecutors said on Wednesday they had also filed charges against Mr Lula da Silva’s wife, Marisa Letícia Lula da Silva, and Paulo Okamoto, the head of the former president’s think-tank, the Lula Institute, as well as several construction industry chiefs in connection with the bribery and kickback scheme.
“Lula was the master of this great orchestra created to loot Petrobras and other public institutions,” said Mr Dallagnol.
Sérgio Moro, the anti-corruption judge who is overseeing the investigation into , will now decide whether to accept the case and formally put Mr Lula da Silva on trial.
Related articleLula da Silva and six others to be tried
Investment banker André Esteves among those facing obstruction of justice case in Brazil
At the centre of the charges is a penthouse apartment in the coastal resort of Guarujá that prosecutors allege was secretly acquired and renovated at great cost for Mr Lula da Silva’s family by OAS, one of the construction groups accused of paying bribes in return for contracts in the Petrobras scandal.
OAS was also accused of paying a large monthly rent for the storage of some of the former president’s goods in a warehouse for five years after his term ended in 2010.
The former president was charged by state prosecutors in March over money laundering and hiding assets in connection to the apartment.
Mr Lula da Silva’s lawyers said there was no evidence the former president or his wife owned the apartment and accused the prosecutors of presenting a flimsy case based on supposition.
“It is a narrative that is completely incompatible with reality and the facts … they were not even aware of, let alone part of, any criminal scheme,” said Cristiano Zanin, one of Mr Lula da Silva’s lawyers on Wednesday evening.
Mr Lula da Silva hit back at prosecutors in an impassioned speech on Thursday in which he broke down in tears on several occasions.
Making little mention of the charges themselves, he spent over an hour defending his legacy and his efforts to help Brazil’s poor, accusing the prosecutors and part of the media of conspiring to end his political career.
“They created a lie, constructed an untruth as if it were the plot of a soap opera,” he said. “If they can prove that I was corrupt, I’ll walk to prison myself,” he added defiantly.
Analysts said the case might weaken Mr Lula da Silva’s chances of a comeback in the 2018 elections and the PT’s electoral chances in municipal elections in October.
But these were already low given the poor state of the economy and the corruption scandal. Brazil was facing a vacuum of strong potential leaders for the 2018 elections but that would not necessarily help Mr Lula da Silva, they said.
“In Brazil, there is a lack of new national leaders with the charisma he [Mr Lula da Silva] has and the visibility he has and that’s what gives him a little bit of hope,” said João Augusto de Castro Neves of Eurasia Group. “But his rejection numbers are very, very high.”
Additional reporting by Carina Rossi in São Paulo
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
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Brazil ex-president Lula charged with corruption
Brazilian prosecutors have accused former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of being the “commander-in-chief” of the country’s vast corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras in a move that is set to unleash further political turmoil in the Latin American nation.
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SOURCE/LINK: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-corruption-idUSKCN11K2C6
Edition:
United States
World News | Wed Sep 14, 2016 | 8:23pm EDT
Brazil's Lula charged as 'top boss' of Petrobras graft scheme
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva talks with his wife Marisa Leticia during a ceremony at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, June 26, 2007. REUTERS/Jamil Bittar/File Photo
By Sergio Spagnuolo | CURITIBA, Brazil
Brazilian prosecutors charged ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on
Wednesday with being the "boss" of a vast corruption scheme at state oil company Petrobras, in a major blow to the leftist hero's hopes of a political comeback.
It was the first time that Lula, still Brazil's most popular politician despite corruption accusations against him and his Workers Party, was charged by federal prosecutors for involvement in the political kickbacks scheme at Petroleo Brasileiro (PETR4.SA), as the company is officially known.
Public Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol told a news conference that Lula will be charged with corruption and money laundering for leading a kickback scheme that caused an estimated 42 billion reais ($12.6 billion) in losses to Petrobras shareholders and tax payers.
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"He was the conductor of this criminal orchestra," Dallagnol said during a detailed presentation of the investigation. "The Petrobras graft scheme aimed at keeping the Workers Party in power by criminal means."
Lula's lawyers said prosecutors lacked evidence to back up their accusations which were part of political persecution to stop him running in the 2018 election.
"This Lula-centered farce was trumped up as an affront to the democratic state and intelligence of Brazilian citizens," one of Lula's lawyers, Cristiano Zanin, told reporters in Sao Paulo.
Dallagnol stopped short of saying investigators would seek an arrest order for Lula, who became a hero to many poor Brazilians during his 2003-2010 government.
The two-year-old Operation Carwash anti-corruption investigation, based in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, has uncovered how political appointees named by Lula's Workers Party and its allies handed overpriced contracts to engineering firms in return for illicit party funding and bribes.
The scandal helped topple the Workers Party from power last month by crushing the popularity of Lula's chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff. She was impeached by Congress on unrelated charges of breaking budget rules, amid rising anger over her handling of Brazil's worst recession since the 1930s.
Dallagnol said that Lula, because of his control of the machinery of the Workers Party and the Brazilian government, was the central figure in the scheme.
Prosecutors allege that the charismatic former union leader had personally received some 3.7 million reais ($1.11 million) in bribes, including a luxury apartment on the coast of Sao Paulo from one of the engineering and construction firms at the center of the bribery scandal, OAS.
Lula has denied ownership of the three-floor condo in Guarujá.
Lula's case will go before crusading anti-corruption Judge Sergio Moro, who has jailed dozens of executives and others involved in the scheme.
Former first lady, Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva, has also been charged.
Lula has separately been indicted by a court in Brasilia for obstruction of justice in a case related to an attempt to persuade a defendant in the Petrobras scandal not to turn state's witness.
BLOW TO LULA MYTH
Lula, 70, has not ruled out running again for president in 2018, but a criminal conviction would bar him from being a candidate for the next eight years.
His fall, as well as that of the leftist party he founded in 1980, has been dramatic.
A one-time shoeshine boy and union leader who led massive strikes against Brazil's military dictatorship, contributing to its downfall, he was elected the nation's first working class president in 2002 after three failed campaigns.
Wildly popular with Brazil's poor, Lula's social policies helped yank millions out of poverty and into the middle class, and he left office in 2010 with an 83-percent approval rating and an economy that grew at a blistering 7.5 percent.
But two years ago, as the Petrobras probe became public, prosecutors began to slowly put Lula in their crosshairs.
Many prosecutors and investigators say they cannot imagine such a powerful figure was unaware of the institutionalized corruption and political kickbacks taking place at Petrobras and other state-run companies.
Marcos Troyjo, a former Brazilian diplomat and co-director of Columbia University's BRICLab in Rio de Janeiro, said he thinks Wednesday's charges are the first of many Lula will be facing in the coming months.
"That means the Workers Party, which may have thought it would move comfortably into the opposition after Dilma's impeachment, will confront extreme challenges," said Troyjo. "It's certainly the beginning of the end to Lula's presidential aspirations for 2018."
Recent polls have shown that despite the investigations targeting Lula and the Workers Party, he would be a favorite to win the next presidential election.
"But these charges are likely too big a blow to the political myth of Lula, to the candidate Lula and to the Workers Party as a whole for that to happen," Troyjo said.
(Reporting by Sergio Spagnuolo; Writing by Anthony Boadle and Brad Brooks; Editing by Andrew Hay and Bill Rigby)
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‘Lula,’ Brazil’s Ex-President, Is Charged With Corruption
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The former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during a news conference in March. Credit Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times
RIO DE JANEIRO — Federal prosecutors in Brazil filed corruption charges Wednesday against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president who has wielded influence across Latin America for decades, portraying him as the mastermind of a sprawling graft scheme intended to maintain his party’s grip on the presidency.
Deltan Dallagnol, a prosecutor, called Mr. da Silva the “ultimate commander” of bribery and kickback schemes that allowed his leftist Workers’ Party to build coalitions in Congress, describing him as “the general” at the helm.
The actual charges against Mr. da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010, focus on a much narrower claim: Prosecutors accuse Mr. da Silva and his wife of illegally receiving about $1.1 million in improvements and expenses for a beachfront apartment paid for by a large construction company seeking public contracts.
But beyond the specific charges, which must still be accepted by a judge, the prosecutors said Mr. da Silva had been instrumental in a bigger corruption scheme that has thrown Brazil’s political system into turmoil for more than two years.
In their complaint on Wednesday, prosecutors contended that Mr. da Silva had overseen a far-reaching system of illicit payments, kickbacks and campaign donations in which the construction company O.A.S. paid as much as $26 million to obtain contracts from Brazil’s oil giant, Petrobras.
The prosecutors did not claim that Mr. da Silva personally pocketed that money. Instead, they asserted that it went to oil executives, Workers’ Party leaders and lawmakers in the governing coalition to help maintain the party’s grip on power. The prosecutors are now demanding that Mr. da Silva return that amount of money to public coffers.
The charges and broader allegations are a major blow to Mr. da Silva, adding to a mounting list of legal problems that have complicated his ambitions of returning to the presidency.
Just a few years ago, Mr. da Silva, a former labor leader who never finished elementary school, ranked among Brazil’s most powerful politicians. His party held the president’s office for 13 years, overseeing a period of brisk economic growth during which millions were lifted out of poverty.
But bribery scandals and a severe economic crisis have tarnished his legacy, ending with the ouster of his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was removed by the Senate in August in a contentious impeachment trial.
Prosecutors in São Paulo had already filed corruption charges against Mr. da Silva at the state level in March, arguing that he had sought to conceal his ownership of the apartment.
Mr. da Silva will also stand trial on charges of obstructing the investigation into the bribery scheme surrounding the national oil company, Petrobras, a federal judge ruled last month.
Nearly 40 politicians and business leaders have been jailed since prosecutors discovered the Petrobras scheme in 2014.
In all, investigators say that contractors paid nearly $3 billion in bribes to executives at the oil giant, who pocketed some of the gains while also channeling funds to politicians in the governing coalition led by the Workers’ Party.
Mr. da Silva and his lawyers have repeatedly said that he did nothing illegal in relation to the apartment in Guarujá, a seaside city near São Paulo.
But investigators said O.A.S., a large Brazilian construction company, had illegally paid for a series of improvements at the property. Prosecutors also filed corruption charges against the former chief executive of O.A.S.
Mr. da Silva’s lawyers, Cristiano Zanin Martins and Roberto Teixeira, said in a statement that the charges and the broader allegations “attack the democratic rule of law and the intelligence of Brazilian citizens,” and that their client was innocent.
The charges were filed after months of simmering tension related to Mr. da Silva’s legal battles.
Federal Police agents raided his home in March and briefly held him for questioning. After that, Ms. Rousseff, the president at the time, offered him a cabinet post that would have given him broad legal protections from being jailed. But Brazil’s Supreme Court blocked the nomination.
Rui Falcão, the president of the Workers’ Party, described the latest charges as an effort to hamper Mr. da Silva’s involvement in politics. Mr. da Silva has signaled that he plans to run for president again in 2018, and polls have placed him among the leading contenders.
“These charges were expected as part of an effort to criminalize Lula,” Mr. Falcão said.
The amount of money that Mr. da Silva is accused of receiving in the form of an apartment upgrade pales in comparison with what others have been accused of pocketing in recent years.
Eduardo Cunha, the conservative former speaker of the lower house of Congress, who orchestrated the effort to oust Ms. Rousseff, is charged with taking as much as $40 million in bribes and laundering them through an evangelical megachurch. And Sérgio Machado, a former chief executive of a Petrobras unit who was a member of the centrist party of Brazil’s new president, Michel Temer, has agreed to return more than $20 million in bribes.
Brazil’s entire political system is struggling to react to the steady drip of charges and revelations from various bribery scandals. The new administration of Mr. Temer, the former vice president who engaged in a bitter power struggle with Ms. Rousseff, is facing dismal approval ratings and doubts about its legitimacy after various cabinet ministers were forced out of their posts over reports that they were seeking to stymie corruption inquiries.
Mr. Temer’s former attorney general, Fábio Medina Osório, claimed over the weekend that he had been fired after seeking damages from construction companies involved in the Petrobras scheme.
Mr. Medina Osório told the magazine Veja that Mr. Temer’s government was seeking to “smother” the inquiry, which is popularly known as Car Wash, after a gas station in Brasília that a black-market money dealer used to launder bribes and kickbacks.
Heightening the sense of distrust, some figures involved in the scheme have been secretly recording one another, with the idea of using the information to reach plea deals with prosecutors.
Follow Simon Romero on Twitter @viaSimonRomero.
Paula Moura contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil.
A version of this article appears in print on September 15, 2016, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Brazil’s Ex-President Is Charged With Graft. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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