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Top criminals fixed result of Rio carnival, police say

Underworld figures fixed the results of Rio de Janeiro's carnival parade this year, Brazilian police said. Press reports suggest that top criminals used bribes and a hitman to buy and intimidate members of the carnival jury.

The fixing allegations center on Anisio Abraao David, 69, the honorary president of the Beija-Flor (hummingbird) samba school, whose empire includes a penthouse apartment on Copacabana beach complete with a swimming pool with a hummingbird motif on the bottom.

Extracts from a federal police report said that "some individuals who worked as carnival jurors and refused to accept benefits from Anisio were threatened or had their relatives threatened with death if the Beija-Flor school did not win the 2007 carnival."

In February Beija-Flor was crowned carnival champion.

Claims that Rio's carnival procession was fixed emerged in April after the police cracked down on a gambling racket allegedly involving the payment of bribes to Brazilian judges.

During a raid on an apartment in northern Rio, agents found 4 million reals (US$2 million) hidden behind a fake wall.

Shortly after the crackdown, known as Operation Hurricane, a parliamentary inquiry was set up.

On Monday, as the allegations grew, the 40 carnival jurors were summoned to testify before the commission.

Over the last 25 years, the carnival parade, a huge competition in which dozens of samba schools vie for supremacy, has become a big industry, with the city's 13 top schools receiving six-figure sponsorship deals.

Exact figures are hard to come by, but media estimates put the cost of the spectacle at more than ?50 million (US$98 million) a year.

Many believe that the influx of so much money has opened the door to growing levels of corruption.

On the eve of this year's carnival the vice president of the Salgueiro samba school was murdered by a gunman using an AK-47 assault rifle. Last October, the president of the Estacio de Sa school was shot dead and bundled into a car boot.
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