Inquiry on Brazil PT's Money Man Calls Him a Fraudster or Prevaricator
Written by Priscilla Mazenotti
Friday, 30 September 2005
The Joint Parliamentary Investigative Commission (CPMI) that is looking into corruption in the Post Office concluded its analysis of the financial records of the DNA and SMP&B ad agencies for 2004 and 2005. The documents were confiscated in the firms' headquarters in Minas Gerais.
The CPMI's assistant reporter on financial activities, deputy Gustavo Fruet (PSDB, Paraná state), said that the documents prove that the advertising executive, Marcos Valério de Souza, who is a partner in these agencies, did not lend money to the Workers' Party (PT).
According to Fruet, the firms' financial records register an outlay of money for the PT. But the funds are not listed as loans receivable. This accounting is different from the one Valério presented to the CMPI, in which the payments to the party were reported as loans.
"The loan to the PT had to appear in the records signed by the accountant just the way they appear in the records that Valério submitted to the CPMI," Fruet argues. "The asset side of the ledger had to include the loan to the PT, because it is a receivable credit," he maintains.
Fruet emphasized that the CPMI has also confirmed that there is no connection between the money that Valério received from banks and the funds he transferred to the PT, "because the money passed through various accounts." Valério's defense rests on his contention that he received bank loans, which he transferred to the party.
The discrepancy between the financial reports and the documents submitted to the CPMI "demonstrates either fraud or prevarication," according to Fruet. The deputy suspects that Valério will assert that he corrected the documents. If the documents were altered, Valério is guilty of fraud. If they were not, he lied to the CPMI. Agência Brasil
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention.
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
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.