RIO DE JANEIRO: A jailed former director of Brazil’s Petrobras has named dozens of lawmakers and a governor said to have received kickbacks from the state-run oil firm, in revelations which could damage President Dilma Rousseff as she seeks re-election next month.
The allegations, detailed in major Brazilian newspapers yesrterday, come with Rousseff battling to regain the initiative from environmentalist Marina Silva, whom polls see as winning an October 26 run-off vote.
Neither Rousseff nor her main rivals for the presidency commented on the case early yesrterday.
Paulo Roberto Costa, the former head of Petrobras’ refining and supply unit who was arrested as part of a money-laundering investigation, gave the names of 49 deputies, 12 senators and a state governor implicated in the scandal to federal police.
They come from three political parties of the congressional majority — Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, or PT, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, and the Progressive Party, or PP — according to opposition newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper spoke of at least 32 lawmakers and a governor belonging to five unspecified political parties.
“There was a politician knocking at my door every single day,” Costa was quoted as saying.
Brazilian media did not give the names of the lawmakers implicated in a corruption scandal worth a reported $4.5bn.
Costa, who faces 30 years in prison, spoke to federal police investigators at the start of the week as part of a deal to reduce his sentence, reports said.
AFP
