Jailed aides to Brazil's Lula say they funneled cash to foreign election campaigns
Top aides to former Brazilian presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff say they ferried millions of dollars in cash to finance presidential election campaigns in Venezuela, El Salvador and Panama, according to testimony made public Friday.
Joao Santana, a former treasurer for the ex-presidents' Workers Party, was known as the "maker of presidents" for his success as a campaign strategist. He was jailed this year on corruption charges in Brazil's largest ever corruption probe, known as Operation Car Wash.
He and his wife Monica Moura are serving eight-year sentences for their part in the scandal, in which billions of dollars from the state oil company Petrobras were funnelled to businessmen and politicians.
In videotaped testimony released on Friday by Brazil's Supreme Court, Moura said that in 2012 Nicolas Maduro, then vice president and now president of Venezuela, personally handed her suitcases stuffed with a total of $10 million in cash to help the re-election campaign of his mentor Hugo Chavez, who won the election but died shortly thereafter of cancer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jailed-aides-brazils-lula-funneled-cash-foreign-election-230536092.html