Brazil’s Tourism Minister Resigns Amid Corruption Accusations
JUNE 16, 2016
BRASÍLIA — Less than two months before Brazil hosts the Olympics, the country’s tourism minister resigned Thursday, becoming the third minister in a month to step down amid a sweeping graft investigation of the state oil company Petrobras.
Tourism Minister Henrique Alves was one of two dozen officials named in plea bargain testimony by a former Petrobras executive linking the interim president, Michel Temer, and several of his closest allies to
Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal ever.
While Mr. Temer dismissed the accusations as frivolous lies, the latest resignation emphasized the risks that come with the sweeping Petrobras investigation, which has thrown Brazil’s politics into chaos and deepened its worst recession in decades.
Sérgio Machado, a former senator from Mr. Temer’s party who ran the shipping arm of Petrobras for more than a decade, was the latest of several politicians and executives who, when pressed by investigators, offered information about friends and allies.
Mr. Machado told prosecutors that Mr. Alves, who served four decades as a congressman, had solicited about $450,000 in campaign funds from the scheme. Mr. Machado said the contributions were made legally but resulted from kickbacks owed by engineering companies that received Petrobras contracts.
Mr. Alves denied the accusation and said late Wednesday on Twitter that contributions to his campaigns had been made through official channels and declared to election authorities.
His resignation adds to recent upheaval at the Tourism Ministry in Brazil, where a global marketing campaign for the Olympics was delayed for months because of a revolving door of ministers and secretaries caused by the political crisis.
“I don’t want to create embarrassments or any difficulties for the government,” Mr. Alves said in a letter to Mr. Temer provided to journalists on Thursday, explaining that he had resigned to focus on defending himself from the accusations.
Mr. Temer also dismissed the graft allegations as dishonest and reckless, pledging in a national address on Thursday morning that his government would not be distracted from
fiscal efforts to revive the economy.
Mr. Temer said it was “irresponsible, ridiculous, mendacious and criminal” to suggest, as Mr. Machado did, that he had sought campaign funds for his party from the graft scheme, the first direct link implicating Mr. Temer in the scandal.
The plea bargain testimony, implicating Mr. Temer and senior members of his governing coalition, stole the thunder from a landmark fiscal initiative revealed the same day.
On Thursday, Brazilian newspapers splashed the bribery allegations across their front pages, pushing the government’s proposed 20-year constitutional cap on public spending far below the fold.
Mr. Machado’s plea deal included allegations that Mr. Temer had sought campaign funds for his party’s 2012 São Paulo mayoral candidate from the graft scheme at Petrobras, the biggest ever uncovered in Brazil.
The accusations provide more fodder for
the suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, and her allies, who accuse Mr. Temer and his party of mounting an impeachment process against her to distract from their own roles in the corruption scandal.
Ms. Rousseff faces a trial in the Senate on unrelated charges of breaking budget rules.
As many as a dozen of the 55 senators who voted last month to put Ms. Rousseff on trial are now undecided, according to surveys by Brazilian news media. If just a couple of them change sides, the Temer camp will fall short of the 54 votes — equivalent to two-thirds of the 81-seat Senate — needed to convict Ms. Rousseff.
If she is convicted in mid-August, as many analysts still expect, Ms. Rousseff will be permanently removed from office, and Mr. Temer will serve out her term until the 2018 election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/americas/brazil-petrobras-henrique-alves.html