Brazil’s biggest ever bribery trial began on Thursday with dozens of former officials facing vote-buying charges in a case that could tarnish the legacy of popular former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In what the media has dubbed “the trial of the century,” 38 former ministers, lawmakers, businessmen and bankers face prosecution before the Supreme Court over alleged vote-buying in Congress between 2002 and 2005.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Carlos Ayres Britto opened proceedings by naming each defendant and detailing the charges, which range from embezzlement and money laundering to corruption and fraud. Those found guilty face up to 45 years in prison.
Photo: AFP
Britto quickly slapped down a defense claim that the court did not have jurisdiction in the case.
Known as mensalao (“big monthly payments”), the scandal embroils senior members of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) and Brazil’s ruling coalition, but more broadly sheds light on the now-reviled practices of the entire political establishment.
Lula, the founder and leader of the leftist party who first took office in January 2003, is not among the defendants. He was followed in office by fellow PT member Dilma Rousseff in January last year.
According to charges that first surfaced in 2005, during Lula’s first term, PT members allegedly offered bribes to members of Congress in exchange for their votes.
Prosecutors allege that the bribe money was skimmed from the advertising budgets of state-owned companies through a company owned by businessman Marcos Valerio de Souza, one of the accused.
None of the 38 accused have been arrested, and none of them were in court.
Lula, now 66 and recovering from throat cancer, said on Thursday that he would not follow the proceedings.
“The attorneys are the ones that have to be there,” he told reporters in Sao Paulo.
The ex-president has maintained that he was betrayed and offered public apologies on behalf of the PT. The party denied any vote-buying or mensalao payments in a statement ahead of the trial.
A lawyer for PT lawmaker Roberto Jefferson, who exposed the alleged vote-buying scheme in 2005, said he would ask during the trial why Lula was not among the accused.
“It is a test for the Brazilian political system. Its credibility is at stake,” Brasilia University political scientist David Fischer said.
Those implicated include Lula’s former chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, former Brazilian communications minister Luiz Gushiken and former Brazilian transportation minister Anderson Adauto, as well as nearly a dozen former legislators in the governing coalition.
Prosecutors believe that Dirceu, a 66-year-old lawyer, former PT leader and Lula’s political enforcer during his first term in office, was the mastermind behind the corruption network. If found guilty, he faces at least 15 years prison.
The opposition Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) said up to US$50 million was doled out in bribes.
However, a lawyer for Dirceu insists there were no payments.
“There was no so-called vote-buying,” the lawyer, Jose Luiz Oliveira Lima, told the daily O Globo on Wednesday.
“There is no proof of any use of public money. Dozens of witnesses categorically say that Dirceu had no knowledge of the loans and [money] transfers,” he said.
Earlier, Brazilian Attorney General Roberto Gurgel called the case “the most daring and outrageous corruption scheme and embezzlement of public funds ever seen in Brazil.”
The first day of the trial ended late on Thursday. Defense arguments were scheduled for yesterday.
The trial, which has received blanket coverage in the Brazilian media, is expected to last one month. The case could affect the outcome of municipal elections in October that will set the political map for the 2014 presidential vote.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.