Federal Investigators in Brazil to Seek Graft Charges Against Ex-President Da Silva
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Version 0 of 1. RIO DE JANEIRO — Federal investigators in Brazil said Friday that they would seek corruption charges against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president who has ranked among the country’s most influential political figures. The move by the Federal Police, an investigative force similar to the F.B.I., deals a new blow to Mr. da Silva and his once-dominant Workers’ Party at a critical juncture: the Senate just began an impeachment trial of Dilma Rousseff, the suspended president who is his handpicked successor, on charges that she manipulated the budget. Brazil was shocked when agents from the Federal Police raided Mr. da Silva’s home and held him for questioning in March. Now investigators are seeking formal charges, accusing Mr. da Silva of illegally benefiting from about $750,000 in improvements paid for by a giant construction company at a beachfront apartment. They also accuse him of money-laundering and misrepresenting his assets. Federal prosecutors will decide whether to charge Mr. da Silva, who already faces a range of legal problems and will go on trial in a separate obstruction of justice case. The findings tie Mr. da Silva, who is universally known as Lula, to the colossal graft scheme engulfing the national oil company, Petrobras. Investigators said they would also seek corruption charges against executives at O.A.S., the construction company that paid for the improvements at the apartment and benefited enormously over the past decade from dealings with Petrobras. In their report, investigators cited intercepts of exchanges between O.A.S. executives on WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service, in which they discuss in detail the improvements done to the apartment. “O.A.S. even opened a specific cost center to account for these expenses,” said Márcio Anselmo, one of the federal investigators. He added that the cost center’s code name was “Zeca Pagodinho,” the name of a Brazilian samba performer. Mr. da Silva, 70, and his lawyers have argued that he did not acquire the apartment. In a statement, the lawyers, Cristiano Zanin Martins and Roberto Teixeira, called the Federal Police’s findings a “work of fiction,” saying that the former president and his wife, Marisa Letícia, who may also face charges in the case, were innocent of any wrongdoing in connection to the property. Prosecutors in São Paulo had already filed corruption charges in March against the former president in a case at the state level involving the apartment, arguing that he sought to conceal ownership of the property. Mr. da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010, will also stand trial on charges of obstructing the investigation into the Petrobras scheme, a federal judge ruled earlier this month. Silvana Batini, a law professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, an elite Brazilian university, said that the “probability is very high” that federal prosecutors would accept the guidance of the Federal Police to file the additional charges against Mr. da Silva, following a pattern of working together in the investigation into corruption at Petrobras. Others cautioned that the case remained in its initial phases. “This does not mean he has been indicted or is a defendant,” said Diego Werneck Arguelhes, another legal scholar in Rio, emphasizing that Mr. da Silva will still have a series of opportunities to present a defense if federal prosecutors file charges and a judge accepts them. The mounting legal problems are complicating the political ambitions of Mr. da Silva, who remains a leading contender for the presidency in 2018. He is expected to appear on Monday in the Senate alongside Ms. Rousseff, who is making a last-ditch effort to avoid being definitively ousted as president. With Ms. Rousseff’s hopes dimming of staving off her ouster, Mr. da Silva, who rose to prominence as a labor leader, has been attacking the scandal-plagued government of the interim president, Michel Temer, which is shifting policy to the right by announcing plans to privatize public companies and overhaul the public pension system. |