SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The treasurer of Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party defrauded investors in 2005 while director of a real estate cooperative to illegally finance party campaigns, a newsmagazine reported yesterday, citing unnamed officials in a state run by an opposition party.
If the scandal gains traction in the media, it could derail the plans of PT Treasurer Joao Vaccari to oversee the campaign financing of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s planned successor, Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, in October elections.
Lula, completing his second term, is ineligible to run in 2010.
The report in Veja, Brazil’s largest-circulation newsmagazine, said the public ministry of Sao Paulo had opened an investigation into whether Vaccari defrauded investors out of at least 31 million reais ($17 million) when he was director of the Bancoop real estate cooperative and channeled the funds into the off-the-books campaign coffers of PT party members.
The report, which was widely carried by other media, did not provide any named sources.
Reports of corruption scandals often break before important elections in Brazil, with serious political consequences. In 2001, newspapers ran front-page photos of stacks of illegal campaign cash that ended the early presidential run of Roseane Sarney, daughter of former President Jose Sarney.