MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Dilma admits Petrobras funds were illegally diverted to finance political parties
Brazilian President and candidate for reelection Dilma Rousseff admitted that funds were illegally diverted at the state-run oil firm Petrobras, allegedly to benefit political parties allied with the government, and she promised to seek reimbursement of that money. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesI heard that millions of dollars were 'donated' by Petrobras to support Evo Morales electioneering in Bolivia.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 08:44 am - Link - Report abuse 0As a state-owned company can I just ask if everyone in Brazil was happy and consenting to this 'donation'? It is their money after all.
Sounds very similar to Venezuela where the ruling party is happy to nationalise the country's assets, then plunder them to finance their own political projects.
It's practically a disease.
This robbing the taxpayers to pay for whatever the pols want for themselves does seem to be endemic throughout SA.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 12:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It’s the nature of the LatAm political class by the look of it.
Everybody knew about these 'diversions',
Oct 20th, 2014 - 12:22 pm - Link - Report abuse 0things we know as 'corruption, and 'stealing'.
I remember ranting about it on this site and others. But Lula and Dilma were teflon targets - like Blair; people who ride right through accusations of wrong-doing.
It was not only stealing, it was the setting up of a whole structure of 'smoke and mirrors' in Petrobras's operations.
Dilma was in charge and IS TOTALLY CULPABLE.
It seems to go across the board. Leftwing, rightwing, they all seem to feel absolutely entitled to trouser as much as possible as soon as they get into power.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 01:11 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The population, in general, are compliant, if not actually complicit in this state of affairs.
Please read this link:
Oct 20th, 2014 - 03:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0http://societocratic-political-regime.blogspot.com.br/2014/10/em-nome-do-brasil-falemos-todos-nos.html
Sincrely
http://societocratic-political-regime.blogspot.com.br/2014/10/em-nome-do-brasil-falemos-todos-nos.html
Pemex, YPF, PVSA... What would you expect?
Oct 20th, 2014 - 05:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Wonderful timing for elections...
“ IF there was diversion... ” ????
Oct 20th, 2014 - 06:46 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Of course there was diversion, and it has been going on since Dizzy D was on the Petrobras board. The whistleblowers guilty of this crime have admitted and explained in detail how the money was collected, whom it was given to, where it went, and how much commission they made on each diversion too.
No IF's about it.
It is raining heavily all over most of Brasil at the moment. I suspect that this, plus the fact Dizzy D realizes how bad this scandal is for her, and that she never should have joined the PT, is really the reason for her “ resting ” at the moment.
Here in the Nordeste, her electorate will of course overlook, trivialize, and rationalize this scandal. But the sad facts are that instead of that moniey going into education, and social welfare programs for the poor, the money went into enriching the pockets and bank accounts of the PT.
In my view her less than punctual admission just lost her the election.
If true,
Oct 20th, 2014 - 06:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0does this mean that arrests and imprisonment will soon come.
@5 P.A.Lacaz
Oct 20th, 2014 - 08:25 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I started to read one of your links/videos and soon realized they are no more than a protest against Aécio, by the so-called “esquerda- caviar”, and by politicians allied with the PT....just a load of BS, by a bunch of fakes, afraid of being caught with their hands in the till.
””If there was diversion, we want (the money) back,“ Rousseff said ”..
We've all heard that bravado before....about 2 years ago when the highest -ranking members of the PT went on trial in the biggest - until then - corruption scandal in Brazil. Today, these filthy thieves are serving very light sentences, some of them even seeking and managing - through a PT dominated Federal Supreme Court - to serve their time at home....just one big vacation. After having diverted hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, from several State-run companies, not ONE CENT has been returned...well, let's be fair, the two top PT members were fined about US$ 300,000.00 each, paid for out of the PT's party funds....and I wonder where it came from...
The truth is that the facts will only surface if the PT is kicked out, otherwise they'll just keep on pretending that they are interested in uncovering the filth.
interesting...
Oct 20th, 2014 - 09:16 pm - Link - Report abuse 0anymore news on PT/PetrosBras funding another country's presidential candidate (Evo)?
If true, it is hardly an ethical way to spend a nationalised company's profit. Surely that money could have been invested in schools etc?
Good post, BOTINHO.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 09:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Did the Dirceu encrypted files ever get broken?
There should have been enough to indite Lula/Dilma and the whole of the P.T. establishment. My guess is that it was not politic to do so as the whole of the Brasilian ruling class would go down with the ship.
@11
Oct 20th, 2014 - 10:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0do digress, what's this all about?
any decent links?
Check out Dirceu on the web - not the footballer. Not just the mensalao. There was much about his 'trials' on this site a couple of years back.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 11:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They said his files were 'unable to be broken' - yeah.
cheers Geoff, I'll look at in the morning when I have time, Good tip, thanks. Brazil is not really my bag, more VNZLA, Colombia or Chile myself. Always happy to learn more, especially as the PT has such strong links with those dirty chavista scum that are killing VNZLA.
Oct 20th, 2014 - 11:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Bad headline, Mercopress. “If there were a diversion, we want the money back,” doesn't sound like an admission, but a declaration that bureaucrats UNDER A DIFFERENT POLITICAL REGIME have admitted to diverting funds and the president of the republic, whom they would love to stick with this scandal, is demanding a refund.
Oct 21st, 2014 - 01:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The story that appears under your deceptive headline is quite different from the actual content of the story. Maybe, Mercopress, you are a part of the problem in Brasil. Your agenda becomes clearer and clearer.
As for you, Ilsen, and your fellow vultures, repeating gossip (“I heard . . .” your words) is not stating fact. I imagine, since the reports have been so well spread but so badly substantiated, that your source must have been a report originating with VEJA - or Folha or Globo or Estado. They just LOVE to create and perpetuate a rumor mill, if it will benefit their corrupt elite owners and their political lackeys.
@15
Oct 21st, 2014 - 03:55 pm - Link - Report abuse 0.I wrote “I heard...” & “if it is true...” Thus making it quite clear that I was not claiming it to be fact.
Anyhoo, who elected you to be Class Prefect? Do you genuinely think you have some right to instruct others in their behaviour or conduct?
Tosser.
Fbear, thank you for your thoughts, but you are obviously not here in Brasil.
Oct 21st, 2014 - 04:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Paulo Roberto Costa, Petrobras Managing Director since 2004, has been interviewed live on television, and not only in magazines or newspapers as you claim. He is providing testimony to the PF to avoid 50-100 years imprisonment.
Costa said that the 3% taken for the PT was valid for contracts across the board at Petrobras. At the departments headed by those appointed by the Workers' Party - exploration and production, gas and energy and services, according to Costa - the whole 3% went directly to the party.
Just stating the facts.
@15 Re: VEJA - or Folha or Globo or Estado -their corrupt elite owners.
Oct 21st, 2014 - 05:11 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Is this a fact? I honestly have no idea if their owners are corrupt or not.
Is your statement factually correct, or just gossip?
Perhaps you could help me out and show me when and where the owners of all 4 titles were prosecuted and found guilty of corruption?
I would be very interested to learn of these facts that you espouse.
And thank you Botinho, but your GPS is a bit off. I have lived here in Brasil for three years and have been following Brazilian politics since my first visit in 1977 and more closely for about the past 15 0r so years.
Oct 21st, 2014 - 05:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I am well aware of the methods of the press to accuse PR ns suppress scandals of PSDB. I am well aware of the fact that there is little chance that Petrobras did NOT divert money. But READ THE STORY, man, read the story. WHO benefitted from the transfer?
“Despite the fact that the opposition has been using the scandal to attack Rousseff, Costa recently said that late Sen. Sergio Guerra, who was the president of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, or PSDB, of Neves, received ”commissions” as part of the diversion of funds.”
Of course the perpetrators, who want their sentences reduced, will implicate whoever it takes, and then the judges will reward them if their implications are successful in upsetting the election.
It all fits the plan to reverse the national progress of the past 12 years and return the elite to the status quo. How much they must despise all those “lazy poor people? who are getting handouts from Bolsa Familia instead of working.”
Sounds just like the north American elite who parrot the same abusive language of those on welfare or food stamps or other assistance mostly BECAUSE that group has been too long ruining the government and the national economy for their own personal bolsas.
Dilma has no PR team on the scale of Aecio, otherwise known as the whole stinking national elite owned media. And thanks to attacks on official misconduct by him because the likely elite-influenced election tribunal thinks “personal attacks” aren't nice, even though they ARE factual. And to see Aecio's sneers when he is listening to the facts and figures. It's almost too much because he is without doubt, mostly style and NO substance.
Think what you will, but a win by him does not bode well for Brasil
Fbear -
Oct 21st, 2014 - 06:27 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I WAS in Brasil through those years and, though I don't expect you to believe my assessment, the damnation of P.T. is abundantly deserved.
I spent those years researching the political goings on of the parties since the military period. I believe in the sheer good of FHC and his willingness to turn his back on corruption.
Subsequently, and especially through the Lula years, I saw at first hand the absolute corruption that he and his affiliated parties let rip across this great land.
I do not need Veja to tell me about Dilma's history and her achievements in administration and government - I did my own research of historical and contemporary corruption. It was (and is) absolutely unbelieveable!
And I experienced this corruption at every turn and in every administrative department of state.
Don't tell me that had Aecio been in power he would have been just as bad - that is just the weakest argument that you might deploy.
It is the time for the opposition coalition to take charge.
It is time for the dismantling of state corruption.
The Mensalao trials were a start, but there is so, so far to go.
And it is necessary to actively go after the prime manager of this all-embracing national corruption - Lula da Silva himself.
Ola Fbear Gringo-
Oct 21st, 2014 - 06:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Once again, you reveal your bias to known facts.
Among other things, the Bolsa Familia progrsm is neither a new PT, or Dilma program. It was started under the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (known here to us as FHC), which anyone here knows.
President Dilma and her PT team began the campaign of attacks, and the repeated mantra of the word liar, or mentiroso. First with Marina Silva, and then onto Neves. He called on that last Sunday, and as others have said, that will be the last time that she uses that tone, and that line of attack.
Obviously, we differ on who to vote for and what is best for Brasil. Under the PT millions if not billions of R$ have disappeared into various PT pockets, under various scandals reported here on Mersosur Press, and other online sources except of course yours.
Enough of one scandal after another with the PT.
Time to vote for a change. ( oh, sorry, you don't have a voting card, do you ? )
Fbear.
Oct 21st, 2014 - 09:07 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I see you have conveniently ignored my post.
I honestly do not know if the owners of those publications are corrupt or not. As you state as fact.
Care to enlighten me?
I'm waiting for verifiable documentation of all the acts of PT corruption. I get generalizations, but no evidence. Whether or not the owners are corrupt can be seen in the way they conduct their business. But all people waiting for Dilma to fall have provided no evidence to support the accusations. Either they are not so guilty as people want to believe or they are the most clever concealers of “smoking guns: in the history of firearms. By now with the relentless media opposition they should have found at least one by now. Even this article says that ”Sen. Sergio Guerra, who was the president of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, or PSDB, of Neves, received ”commissions” as part of the diversion of funds.“.
Oct 22nd, 2014 - 01:04 am - Link - Report abuse 0These so-called whistle blowers will implicate anyone to shorter their sentences and hope for an upset and get the resulting pardon for services rendered to Aecio.
About FHC's kindness, maybe you think PSDB oppoments are ”Brazilian hillbillies.“ as FHC said. Maybe you think it is kind to label older citizens as ”vagabondos.“ I do not.
I would vote for Dilma if I were eligible, just as I usually vote for the Democrats in the USA, but I have no choice there other than to waste my vote. Our ”PSDB“ already has sold the USA to Wall street. At least the democrats try to include all Americans and provide something for the less powerful. The evidence of social changes here in Brasil in the past 12 years surely suggests that a lot more money has been used for that than for enrichment of PT people. ”Bolsa Escola,” the FHC program, not the one that has worked for millions recently to encourage school attendance, was not funded and with FHC never got out of the pilot program stage. Hmmm . . . I wonder why. . . good plan, no action.
I get my info from a Brazilian political scientist who knows this country's politics and history. It is exactly why he has joined PT - he knows where the bodies are really buried. I respect the evidence and also study.
Fbear -
Oct 22nd, 2014 - 05:17 am - Link - Report abuse 0Thank you for that post. Very revealing.
Now sit back, Caipirinha or 5 in hand, and watch us vote this Sunday. Not the 51 or Leblon type all the gringos drink. Something on the scale of a good Ypioca.
You and Professor “ Eletro ” may even want a full bottle.to share.
The simple fact that Dilma has had no choice but to ADMIT to corruption in Petrobrás - and during her watch - means she can no longer hide it....because if there was a shred of a possibility that she could plausibly keep on lying, and denying it, she would.
Oct 22nd, 2014 - 04:37 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@15 Fbear
The fact that, by your own admission, that you have in in Brazil for such a short time, explains your miscomprehension of the facts :
““If there were a diversion, we want the money back,” doesn't sound like an admission, but a declaration that bureaucrats UNDER A DIFFERENT POLITICAL REGIME have admitted to diverting funds ...etc””
This statement IS indeed an admission of guilt, not someone trying to pass the buck to some previous government ; while Petrobrás control (51%) was in private hands, it was doing very well....after the PT nationalized it again, through a disgusting accounting gimmick, and started to use it politically, it has gone down the drain...the only oil company in the world to make a loss, shares down to less than 20% of the value 7 years ago....the “official” stats speak for themselves.
The fact that Dilma and the PT have not denied the 'donation' of USD 434 million to Morales campaign in Bolivia, is, knowing the PT, another clear sign of guilt....otherwise they would've come back immediately denying it and promising to prosecute anyone who had the nerve to publish such a lie. The question is no longer “did they steal ?”, it's “how much ?” and 'when ?“ and where did it go ??”
It might be a good idea for you to give credibility to the main, INDEPENDENT sources of news - which I choose to verify through other sources as well - as being pretty close to the truth, plus also to the opinions of people who have lived the FULL experience and have a good grasp of the real situation...you mentioned somewhere above, something to the effect that the PSDB manipulates the Press....it's exactly the opposite....the PT does, and it's a notorious fact.
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