|
Brazil's orthodox Finance Minister Antonio Palocci was linked to the corruption scandal of the ruling Workers Party by a former aide who claims he received money from a trash collection company when he was mayor of Ribeirão Preto, in the interior of São Paulo state.
Solicitor Rogério Buratti claimed before the Attorney General Office that when Mr. Palocci was mayor he received monthly payments equivalent of US$ 21,000 from the company responsible for the city's garbage disposal.
Apparently the money was then handed to the former Treasurer of the Workers Party, Delúbio Soares who admitted before the Brazilian Congress he managed a parallel accountancy with which political campaigns were financed.
Mr. Palocci was mayor of Ribeirão Preto, 300 kilometers to the northeast of São Paulo city for two periods (1993/96 and 2000/01), when he left the Town Hall to become President Lula da Silva's Finance Minister.
Allegedly payments were done during his second mandate as mayor.
Buratti who is currently under arrest for money laundering and destroying evidence in an extortion case involving a lottery and games corporation, was Cabinet Chief of Mr. Palocci during this first period and later legislative advisor to President Lula da Silva's former Cabinet Chief José Dirceu, who was forced to resign because of his involvement in the Workers Party bribes for votes scheme.
One of the companies which made payments to Mr. Palocci according to Buratti was Leão Leão, where he worked as legal advisor.
Mr. Buratti made the claims after having reached an agreement with the Attorney General Office, which privileges witnesses who collaborate with the prosecution. The allegations had an immediate impact in Brazil's markets with the São Paulo stock exchange plunging 2,8% and the Real losing 4% against the US dollar.
So far financial markets had remained immune to the Brazilian political crisis because the barrage of claims and accusations had not involved President Lula da Silva or Finance Minister Palocci, which are considered the guarantors of the current economy program continuity.
But according to financial analysts if the political crisis sweeps away with Mr. Palocci it will be virtually impossible to avoid the advance of uncertainty to markets.
Furthermore Jackson da Silva, one of the president's 15 brothers said he believed it was "impossible" Lula da Silva did not know what was happening around him.
"Dirceu and Soares have been with my brother for years. My wife can cheat on me for a month, but not years and years," underlined Jackson da Silva.
"If Dad were alive he would have pulled his ear for not saying the truth".
Mercopress - www.mercopress.com
 |
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.