Lula corruption probe rattles FAO

Old sweats? FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva (left) and former Brazilian President Lula
 ROME - The investigation of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for illicit influence peddling is increasingly embarrasing top FAO management as the UN agency prepares for the former Brazilian president to give the prestigious McDougall Memorial Lecture next month, UN sources say.
 The prosecutors’ office in Brazil’s capital Brasília confirmed this month reports by Epoca magazine that Mr Lula da Silva is being questioned by their anti-corruption unit over claims he helped construction conglomerate Odebrecht win contracts overseas between 2011 and 2014. Lula was invited last year to give the lecture in Rome at the Food and Agriculture Organisation's June Conference by his former protegée, the agency's Director general, Jose Graziano da Silva, who was a minister in the first Lula government.
  "I have it on good authority that the Fourth Floor is worried about these developments, and about the Lula visit blowing up in their faces," a senior FAO insider said.
 Graziano sent the agency's unctuous Spanish chief press officer Enrique Yeves to Brazil to arrange Lula's trip, which will be paid for by the FAO and is to be followed by Lula visiting the Milan Expo 2015 universal exposition, which has been plagued by corruption. 
 "Even though the Santiago Office could have organized this visit to FAO, Yeves went on duty travel to Brazil to arrange the logistics," said the senior source, "all of this for a guy who is being investigated.  Is this what FAO has become? " 
 In addition to the lecture, the FAO under Graziano's stewardship has started a major partnership with the Lula Institute and the African Union "to end hunger on the continent by 2025" -- another typical grandiose long term FAO target to justify major expenditure set after the flop of the UN Millenium goals. 
 Época alleged that Mr Lula da Silva improperly used his influence to obtain loans from Brazil’s state development bank BNDES for Odebrecht’s dealings in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, often travelling to meet the countries’ leaders at the company’s expense. The magazine also accused Mr Lula da Silva, one of the founders of the ruling Workers’ Party (PT), of similar influence peddling in Ghana and Angola.
 Mr Lula da Silva, Odebrecht and BNDES have denied any wrongdoing.
 The prosecutors’ inquiry – a preliminary step to decide whether to launch a formal investigation – comes as his successor Dilma Rousseff is already facing calls for her impeachment over a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at state-controlled oil company Petrobras. While Ms Rousseff has not been accused of involvement in the bribery and kickback scheme, she was chair of the company when much of the graft unearthed by prosecutors allegedly took place. The PT’s treasurer has also been jailed in connection to the scandal.
 “We see the investigation against Lula as meaningful, and a reinforcement of our assessment that Rousseff’s larger economic and political liabilities in fact rest with the potential for the corruption probes to grow,” the Financial TImes quoted Christopher Garman at Eurasia Group writing in a note.
 “Federal prosecutors and police are clearly in overdrive mode and see this as their  moment to rid the public sector of corruption,” he said.
If evidence emerges of wrongdoing by BNDES, the case would gain further significance given the vast size of the development bank, Mr Garman wrote.
 “If [BNDES] is implicated, the risk of investigations bleeding into other sectors of the economy is acute,” he wrote, although adding that claims of influence peddling are “vague” given that Mr Lula da Silva was not president at the time.
 In a speech to celebrate International Worker’s Day, the former president told adoring crowds that magazines such as Época and Veja, which frequently criticise him, were “worthless trash”.
 “Put together 10 journalists from Veja and from Época and they won’t have even 10 per cent of the honesty I do,” Mr Lula da Silva said.
 The investigation is looking into projects brokered by Lula -- and financed through billions of dollars in Brazilian taxpayer money.
 Featured prominently among these is the dlrs 800 million that Odebrecht received to build the new Port of the Mariel facility, in partnership with the Cuban military.
Since then, Odebrecht has become the Castro regime's most prized foreign business partner.
 According to Epoca, Odebrecht paid Lula to travel to countries including Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Ghana to help seal deals.
 Accusing Epoca of not checking its facts, the Lula Institute said the former leader did not travel in order to lobby but to give speeches and generally promote Brazil.
The institute added that Epoca contacted it hours prior to publication but did not publish its response.
 
Jose Graziano, director general of FAO, Paulo Okamotto, presidente of Instituto Lula, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, president of the AU Comissión and Lula, Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Instituto Lula
Popular: Lula at a Bolivian community fair in Sao Paolo in January