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Brazil's attorney general calls for investigation into opposition leader

Xinhua, May 3, 2016 Adjust font size:

Brazilian Attorney General Rodrigo Janot on Monday asked the Supreme Court to investigate Senator Aecio Neves, leader of the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party, according to the daily O Globo.

Janot made the request based on information provided by Delcidio Amaral, former leader of the ruling Workers' Party in the Senate.

Amaral was arrested in November 2015 for receiving bribes in a corruption scandal related to state-owned oil company Petrobras. He is cooperating with investigators to reduce his time in jail.

According to Amaral, Neves, who lost the 2014 presidential election to President Dilma Rousseff, had allegedly received illegal funds from state-owned companies to finance his party's election campaigns.

According to O Globo, Janot provided two potential lines of investigation against Neves. The first is about his alleged bribe taking from Furnas, a public energy company, and the second is about him allegedly pressuring a bank to change its data to hide a vote-buying scheme in the state of Minas Gerais, where Neves served as governor from 2002 to 2010.

Janot also mentioned three members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), a former key coalition partner of the Workers' Party, were suspected of receiving bribes during the construction of the Belo Monte Dam in the state of Para.

The three are Renan Calheiros, PMDB leader in the Senate, and senators Jader Barbalho and Valdir Raupp.

Amaral said that bribes of at least 30 million reais (8.5 million U.S. dollars) were paid out during the building of the hydroelectric dam complex, including to the above-mentioned senators.

Construction on the Belo Monte dam began in March 2011 and is scheduled to be completed in 2019. Endi