Speaking a day after prosecutors accused him of masterminding a massive pay-to-play scheme at state oil company Petrobras, the popular leftist said Brazilian “elites” were plotting his downfall along with that of his recently impeached successor, Dilma Rousseff. Presenting the case at a press conference in Curitiba on Wednesday, prosecutor Deltan Dalagnol went much further, however, charging that Lula had “appointed several senior executives at Petrobras so that they could raise money for political parties in the governing coalition”. “It’s certainly the beginning of the end to Lula’s presidential aspirations for 2018”.
Advertisement
The prosecutors indicated that their case has been built in large part on the basis of testimony by former Petrobras officials, politicians and businessmen who have been charged in the scandal. The courts prevented him from joining her cabinet before Congress voted to temporarily remove her from office and put her on trial for allegedly using accounting tricks in the federal budget.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says that he and his Workers’ Party are victims of a sustained campaign by the country’s establishment.
Were in a moment in Brazil in which what matters is not the process or the evidence but the headline.
Brazilian media reported that police are investigating the Workers Party governor of Minas Gerais state, Fernando Pimentel, for facilitating loans by the national development bank BNDES to finance projects in Argentina and Mozambique by Brazil’s largest builder, Odebrecht, when he was a minister in Rousseff’s government. “When I break the law, punish me”, he said.
He also was key in winning hosting rights to the 2014 World Cup and the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, which finished on August 21 – South America’s first. The improvements, valued at about $750,000, were made by construction company OAS, one of those involved in the kickback scheme emanating from Petrobras.
He has already been charged with attempting to obstruct investigations in the Petrobras case, in a probe dubbed “Operation Carwash”.
Speaking through his lawyers, the former president said he “vehemently” rejects the allegations, which he said have no basis in fact.
The most important of these consisted of organizations affiliated with international tendencies led by figures like Ernest Mandel, Nahuel Moreno and Pierre Lambert, who had broken in an earlier period from Trotskyism and the International Committee of the Fourth International to adapt themselves to Castroism and other forms of bourgeois nationalism, along with Stalinism and social democracy.
Advertisement
In response, Falcao said: “We were awaiting this accusation, it had been expected”.
