Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been called in for questioning next week by federal police in a bribery investigation involving his son Luis Claudio, according to a summons document.
Mr Lula is not under investigation but will be questioned about the case in which police suspect a 2.5 million-real ($646,000) payment to one of his son’s companies could have been a bribe to influence passage of legislation to help the car industry.
The summons dated December 1st instructs Mr Lula to appear at police headquarters next Thursday to “provide clarifications.”
Mr Lula’s attorney said the former president had no relation at all to the event being investigated and had not received the summons but would appear for questioning if summoned.
Police raided the offices of a company owned by Mr Lula’s son on October 26th as part of the bribery investigation that threatens to drag his family into yet another scandal. Police said at the time that evidence of bribery, extortion and influence trafficking prompted the raid.
The former president is himself under investigation over a bribery scandal after he left office in 2010 as Brazil’s most popular president. The six-month inquiry has found nothing illegal, said attorney Cristiano Zanin Martins, of the Teixeira, Martins & Advogados firm that represents the Lula family.
“The former president is facing no criminal investigation. Like any citizen he can be called to help in criminal probes, and he has done so in one case before,” the lawyer said.
Mr Lula’s reputation has been tarnished by a huge kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras that put the treasurer of his Workers’ Party in jail and has implicated dozens of his political allies.
Neither Mr Lula nor his hand-picked successor, President Dilma Rousseff, are being investigated in the graft scandal spreading to other state companies, but Ms Rousseff’s government has been weakened and her opponents are trying to impeach her for breaking budget laws.
On Wednesday, a judge accepted a police request to break bank and tax secrecy for Luis Claudio’s company, LFT Marketing Esportivo, and a former Lula cabinet minister, Gilberto Carvalho.
Mr Martins said the payment in question was a sports marketing consultancy job duly reported to tax authorities. A police report published by Brazilian media said the advice provided for the contract was cut and pasted from Wikipedia.
Reuters