RIO DE JANEIRO — Federal prosecutors in Brazil said Thursday that they were opening a full investigation into claims of influence peddling by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
the former president whose leftist Workers Party is already struggling
with a sweeping graft scandal involving some of the country’s most
powerful political figures.
The
move by a special anticorruption unit of the Public Ministry, a body of
independent prosecutors, advances a preliminary inquiry into whether
Mr. da Silva, 69, used his influence on behalf of the construction giant
Odebrecht, which relies heavily on financing from Brazil’s large
national development bank, for contracts in Latin America and Africa.
The
expansion of the investigation increases pressure on both Mr. da Silva,
one of Brazil’s most influential politicians, and his protégée and
successor, Dilma Rousseff, who is facing calls of impeachment over a
scandal in which former executives at the national oil company,
Petrobras, said they had accepted huge bribes for themselves and for
leading figures in the governing coalition.
Separate
from the investigation of Mr. da Silva, Odebrecht, one of Brazil’s
largest corporations, is at the heart of the oil scandal. In June, the
police arrested Marcelo Odebrecht,
the company’s billionaire chief executive; he remains in jail in the
southern city of Curitiba. Prosecutors accused Mr. Odebrecht and other
senior executives of large construction companies of knowing that their
companies were paying bribes to politicians.
Reacting
to the latest development on Mr. da Silva, the former president’s
institute called the full investigation “unjustified,” saying Mr. da
Silva was the target of “manipulations and arbitrariness” aimed at
staining his image in Brazil and abroad.
Much
as former leaders of the United States and other countries give
speeches around the world, Mr. da Silva, who was president for two terms
from 2003 to 2010, has leveraged his prominence into lucrative speaking
engagements outside Brazil. On various occasions, he has traveled
abroad on private jets paid for by Odebrecht to countries where the
company has contracts.
A
spokeswoman for the Public Ministry said investigators were focusing on
Odebrecht’s dealings in Panama, Venezuela, Cuba and the Dominican
Republic, in addition to some unspecified African countries.
Odebrecht
denied any wrongdoing in a statement, contending, “The ex-president did
exactly what foreign presidents and ex-presidents have done when
promoting the business of their respective countries.”
As
Brazilians absorb revelations from an array of scandals that are
unfolding simultaneously, Mr. da Silva is far from being the only
prominent politician to come under greater scrutiny, reflecting how
figures across the ideological spectrum are being put on the defensive.
For
instance, this week the police searched the properties of another
former president, Fernando Collor de Mello, seizing more than $1 million
in cash and vehicles, including a Ferrari, a Porsche and a Lamborghini,
as part of their investigation into whether Mr. Collor was involved in
the Petrobras graft scheme.
Mr. Collor, 65, who is now a senator, resigned as president in 1992 during a scandal in which he was accused of condoning an influence-peddling scheme operated by his campaign treasurer.
Another
powerful figure, Eduardo Cunha, the conservative speaker of the lower
house of Congress, was accused Thursday of soliciting a $5 million bribe
from a contractor seeking business with Petrobras. Mr. Cunha rejected
the accusation, calling the former executive who made it “a liar.”
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Faça seu comentário