|
For University of Brasília political scientist, David Fleischer, irregular campaign financing in Brazil is a widely known fact and accounts for a substantial portion of candidates' war chests.
"Everybody knows that all candidates, from all parties, use clandestine contributions, and that clandestine contributions represent roughly 90% of what they spend," Fleischer commented today in an interview with the Agência Brasil.
On Saturday, July 16, Delúbio Soares, who is on leave from his post as secretary of Finance of the PT (Workers' Party), confessed in a Globo TV interview that the party makes use of "unreported" funds in its electoral campaigns.
Fleischer's assessment proceeds along the same lines. "This (clandestine contributions) is a fact, it prevails, and everybody accepts it, only there is no way to prove it, because it is very well concealed."
The political scientist says that charges involving such irregularities generally only induce the party to make a "correction" in its financial accounts.
"Once in a while the newspapers discover that a candidate incurred an expense that was not reported, in which case the candidate or the party has the right to make a correction in the reports it filed with the Elections Court."
According to the professor, the crime of using "unreported" funds has two facets, involving a double violation of both fiscal and electoral law.
One aspect is made up of companies that don't declare their real profits, avoid paying taxes, and invest the diverted sums in the form of political contributions.
On the other side, there is the party, which accepts and uses this money without reporting it. The association between the two, he recalls, is frequently linked to the approval of bills and other government actions that benefit the contributors.
As for the penalties for this irregular use of funds, Fleischer explains that they can be imposed in various manners. The Federal Elections Court (TSE) decides which one would be most appropriate in each case.
"There can be a fine, a suspension of the party for a certain period, and, in the gravest instances, even the expulsion of the party or the abolition of the party per se."
He also points out that, in cases in which it is proved that a politician was elected through the use of these irregular funds, the politician's mandate can also be revoked.
Regarding Soares' declaration, the professor believes that the fact he personally assumed responsibility for the use of irregular contributions will not free the PT from being held accountable by the courts.
"In any case, it's the PT that would suffer, because, regardless of how much Delúbio Soares insists he acted alone, he acted in the name of the party, which is a legal entity."
ABr - www.radiobras.gov.br
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.