Al jazeera-<\/p>\n
Brazil<\/a>\u00a0has formally charged two former presidents,\u00a0Dilma Rousseff<\/a>\u00a0and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with racketeering for plotting to skim funds from Petrobras, the state-owned oil firm.<\/p>\n Brazil’s top prosecutor, Rodrigo Janot, alleged on Tuesday that eight members of the Workers Party, including Lula and Rousseff, committed a series of crimes involving Petrobras, including cartel formation,\u00a0corruption<\/a>\u00a0and money laundering.<\/p>\n They were the first criminal charges to be levelled against Rousseff, who was impeached in 2016 for breaking budgetary laws.<\/p>\n The news was particularly bad for the uphill battle Lula is\u00a0waging<\/a>\u00a0to win the presidency again.<\/p>\n Lula, who is still Brazil’s most popular politician, is appealing a corruption conviction that would bar him from running for president in 2018.<\/p>\n He faces four other corruption trials.<\/p>\n Rousseff was Lula’s designated successor and Brazil’s first female president.<\/p>\n “The crimes are believed to have taken place at least from mid-2002 to May 12, 2016” when Rousseff was suspended as part of impeachment proceedings, the attorney general’s office said.<\/p>\n Their Workers’ Party allegedly pocketed $475m in bribe money, “making use of public entities including Petrobras, the National Development Bank (BNDES) and the Planning Ministry”, according to the charges.<\/p>\n Janot alleged that much of what became a transnational corruption operation was run by Lula.<\/p>\n Lula’s lawyer said the law was being misused to persecute the former president.<\/p>\n In a statement, the Workers Party said the charges were baseless and being used to divert attention from other investigations, including one into a former federal prosecutor, referring to a case Janot announced on Monday.<\/p>\n A representative for Rousseff said the prosecutor’s office offered no evidence of the crimes and called on the Supreme Court to guarantee the right to defend against them.<\/p>\n The charges arise from the Operation Car Wash investigation that uncovered a cartel of companies paying bribes to officials to secure Petrobras contracts, revelations that have spawned a host of investigations that has shaken Brazil’s political system and economy.<\/p>\n Dozens of senior leaders across the political spectrum and high-ranking businessmen have been investigated or convicted since the sprawling corruption scandal broke in 2014.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Al jazeera- Brazil\u00a0has formally charged two former presidents,\u00a0Dilma Rousseff\u00a0and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with racketeering for plotting to skim funds from Petrobras, the state-owned oil firm. Brazil’s top prosecutor, Rodrigo Janot, alleged on Tuesday that eight members of the Workers Party, including Lula and Rousseff, committed a series of crimes involving Petrobras, including cartel formation,\u00a0corruption\u00a0and money laundering. They were… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}