Brazil Court to Decide whether to Reopen Bribery Trial
The Supreme Court was to decide Wednesday whether to reopen Brazil's biggest political corruption trial, in which key members of the ruling Workers' Party were convicted.
The 11-member court was to rule on appeals by 12 of 25 politicians, businessmen and bankers convicted of graft in the so-called "Mensalao" scandal, a congressional vote-buying scheme that ran during the first term of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Last December, the high court convicted 25 of 38 defendants, including three former Lula aides, notably ex-chief of staff Jose Dirceu, who was seen as the mastermind and received a jail term of 10 years and 10 months.
The scandal nearly cost Lula his re-election in 2006. But the popular ex-president and ruling party founder was cleared.
On Wednesday Justice Celso de Mello was to cast the deciding vote on ordering a retrial to break a five-to-five tie among his colleagues last week.
That stalemate came at a marathon session which was adjourned before Mello voted. It was decided he would cast the deciding vote.
Monday, President Dilma Rousseff, who succeeded her mentor Lula in 2010, called on the judiciary to act "with wisdom, agility and serenity".
A survey by the Datafolha Institute published Wednesday found that 55 percent of people polled in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous city, were against a retrial while 37 percent were in favor.
Some 79 percent of the 719 people questioned said those convicted in the landmark trial should be jailed immediately.
Two other top Lula aides, Jose Genoino, who headed the Workers Party at the time, and party treasurer Delubio Soares, are among those convicted.
According to charges that first surfaced in 2005, party members allegedly offered bribes to lawmakers in exchange for their votes.
Prosecutors said the bribe money was skimmed from the advertising budgets of state-owned companies through a firm owned by businessman Marcos Valerio de Souza.
Source: Agence France Presse
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