Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was on Wednesday charged with being the “boss” of a vast corruption scheme at state oil company Petrobras, in a major blow to the leftist hero’s hopes of a political comeback.
It was the first time that Lula, still Brazil’s most popular politician despite corruption accusations against him and his Workers’ Party, was charged by federal prosecutors for involvement in the political kickbacks scheme at Petroleo Brasileiro, as the company is officially known.
Public prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol told a news conference that Lula is to be charged with corruption and money laundering for leading a kickback scheme that caused an estimated 42 billion Brazilian real (US$12.56 billion) in losses to Petrobras shareholders and taxpayers.
Photo: Reuters
“He was the conductor of this criminal orchestra,” Dallagnol said during a detailed presentation of the investigation. “The Petrobras graft scheme aimed at keeping the Workers’ Party in power by criminal means.”
Lula’s lawyers said prosecutors lacked evidence to back up their accusations, which were part of political persecution to stop him running in the 2018 election.
“This Lula-centered farce was trumped up as an affront to the democratic state and intelligence of Brazilian citizens,” one of Lula’s lawyers, Cristiano Zanin, told reporters in Sao Paulo.
Dallagnol stopped short of saying investigators would seek an arrest order for Lula, who became a hero to many poor Brazilians during his time in office.
The two-year-old Operation Carwash anti-corruption investigation, based in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, has uncovered how political appointees named by Lula’s Workers’ Party and its allies handed overpriced contracts to engineering firms in return for illicit party funding and bribes.
The scandal helped topple the Workers’ Party from power last month by crushing the popularity of Lula’s chosen successor, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. She was impeached by congress on unrelated charges of breaking budget rules, amid rising anger over her handling of Brazil’s worst recession since the 1930s.
Dallagnol said that Lula, because of his control of the machinery of the Workers’ Party and the Brazilian government, was the central figure in the scheme.
Prosecutors allege that the charismatic former union leader had personally received about 3.7 million Brazilian real in bribes, including a luxury apartment on the coast of Sao Paulo from one of the engineering and construction firms at the center of the bribery scandal, OAS.
Lula has denied ownership of the three-floor condo in Guaruja.
Lula’s case will go before crusading anti-corruption judge Sergio Moro, who has jailed dozens of executives and others involved in the scheme.
Former Brazilian first lady, Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva, has also been charged.
Lula has separately been indicted by a court in Brasilia for obstruction of justice in a case related to an attempt to persuade a defendant in the Petrobras scandal not to turn state’s witness.
Lula, 70, has not ruled out running again for president in 2018, but a criminal conviction would bar him from being a candidate for the next eight years.
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