Off the wire
• Morocco, Nigeria sign deal to build gas pipeline across West Africa  • Libya, Italy join hands to stem flow of illegal immigrants  • U.S. dollar declines on downbeat data  • Study: small DNA marker set helpful, but raises privacy concerns  • Federer to skip Roland Garros, focus on grass and hard court seasons  • Rwanda's economy to recover on expanded domestic production: IMF  • Venezuela protest victims reach 40 after one more police dead  • 2nd LD Writethru: U.S. charter bus carrying 26 kids overturns near Baltimore, many injured  • Italian police take over Lidl supermarket offices in mafia probe  • UN agencies call for urgent funding to help South Sudanese refugees  
You are here: 　 Home

Lula denied new defense witnesses in corruption trial

Xinhua, May 15, 2017 Adjust font size:

Brazilian Federal judge Sergio Moro on Monday refused to allow former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to call new defense witnesses in a case that accused him of receiving bribes.

In a statement, Moro denied the request by Lula's defense team to add new witnesses ahead of final statements. Lula denies being the owner of a luxury three-floor apartment in Guaruja, near Sao Paulo, which was allegedly given to him as a gift by the construction company OAS.

Moro oversees the investigation into the Petrobras corruption ring. The charges against Lula state that he is guilty of passive corruption and money laundering for having received assets from OAS worth a total of 3.7 million reais (1.15 million U.S. dollars), in exchange for favoring the company with public contracts.

In total, the former president is facing five separate legal cases, which could stop him from running in the 2018 presidential elections. But the former president denied all the charges against him.

Repeated polls show him clearly in the lead as the favored candidate of the Brazilian electorate. Endit